Cobra Guardian

  Reflexively, he squeezed his eyes shut against the brilliant flash of blue, his arms flailing momentarily for balance as a blast of heat and a tornado wind slammed sideways across him, nearly knocking him off his feet. His nanocomputer took over, ducking him away from the heat and then twisting him back into his zigzag pattern. The warship's laser fired again, this shot coming close enough for Lorne to smell the acrid scent of ozone. He kept his eyes shut, using his opticals to find safe footing. He dodged around a protruding vent, turned again in time to avoid another shot. Ahead, the edge of the roof was rushing toward him, and he could see the five-meter gap of the service alley that separated him from the next building over. It was a much shorter distance, and therefore an even simpler jump, than the one he'd already performed in getting across Mitterly Street from the Hendrezon's building roof.

  Only this time, he knew, that trick wouldn't work. The instant his feet left the rooftop he would once again be on a ballistic path which would allow no zigzagging or dodging or any of the maneuvering that was currently keeping him alive.

  The Trofts hadn't been ready the last time he'd pulled that stunt. This time, they would be.

  And it was becoming apparent that the Trofts had done the same calculation and come to the same conclusion. The massive ship-mounted laser ahead that had been firing uselessly at him had gone silent, its gunners waiting in anticipation of the moment when Lorne would have to either jump or else come to a sitting-duck halt at the edge of the roof. Whichever he chose, it would then take only a single clean shot to end it all.

  Reaching the end of the roof, Lorne jumped.

  But not up and over as he had the last time, with the goal of bridging the gap and landing on the next rooftop. Instead, he leaped downward, aiming for the side of the other building.

  For the second time in two minutes, the Trofts were caught completely by surprise. Lorne's body was in the middle of its rotation when the ship-mounted laser slashed its fiery death over his head, squarely through the space where he would have been if he'd tried to jump the gap. A second shot slashed through the edge of the roof, vaporizing a groove through the tile and stone and steel and raining a shower of debris along the wall toward him.

  But Lorne was no longer there. His nanocomputer had once again taken over, turning him just enough in midair so that he hit the far wall feetfirst. His knees took the impact, the friction of his feet against the wall fractionally slowing him down and starting to flip him over. Before he could simply bounce off the wall and fall straight down, his knees straightened again, sending him back toward the side of his original building in a heels-over-head flip that again brought him to a feetfirst impact on the other wall, a few meters lower than the point where he'd started. Again his knees bent and straightened, again slowing him down and sending him back across the alley. One more bounce-and-flip, and he reached the ground, his knees bending one final time as he hit the service alley pavement--

  --Dead center into a group of three very startled spine leopards.

  Fortunately, Lorne had no intention of staying long enough for them to recover from their surprise. His knees straightened convulsively as he launched himself into a rolling leap over the Trofts' fence into the safe zone beyond.

  This time, he nearly bowled over a knot of spectators who had been in view of his building-hop and were still standing there, wide-eyed, as he landed in their midst. "Sorry," he apologized as he bumped hard into two of them before he could catch his balance, staggering them backwards into another group. He craned his neck over the crowds, trying to see whether or not Treakness and the other refugees had made it through the Hendrezon's building yet and were coming out onto the street.

  "Hey!" someone shouted.

  Lorne turned. But the man wasn't shouting to him. Instead, he was facing the Troft armored vehicle and soldiers half a block away, waving his hand urgently over the mass of people. "Hey! He's over here. Damn it, he's over--"

  He was cut off in mid sentence as another man stepped forward and backhanded him hard across the face. "Shut up, you fool," the second man snarled as the first spun around with the impact and fell heavily onto the pavement. "You want them shooting at us?"

  He jabbed a finger at Lorne. "You--get out of here," he bit out. "You hear me? Go. We've got enough trouble as it is."

  But I can help you! Lorne wanted to say.

  The words died in his throat . . . because the man was right. Lorne couldn't help them, at least not with the help they wanted. He couldn't get them food or shelter or safety. All he could do was run around and make trouble, and probably get someone killed.

  He looked at the other people around him. On every one of those faces were expressions of fear or despair, anger or even hatred. Not a single person was looking at Lorne with respect, trust, or hope.

  "I understand," he said quietly. "Good luck."

  Without waiting for a reply, he ducked between two of them and threaded his way through the crowds that were doing their panicked best to hurry away from the burst of combat that had unexpectedly brought fire and death into their captivity.

  Midway down the block, he slipped off the coat the woman had given him and tossed it against the side of the nearest building.

  He let the crowd carry him another block, wondering what he should do. The arrangement with Treakness had been to rendezvous six blocks west of Hendrezon's, but now that Lorne was actually experiencing the barely controlled chaos he was wondering if the governor and the others were ever going to be able to make it that far on their own.

  But going back to get them entailed its own set of risks. It had been several minutes since the exchange of laser fire, and the crowd was starting to settle down, but the general movement in Lorne's vicinity was still away from the site of the brief battle. Turning around would mean going upstream against the flow, posing additional risk to the civilians he would be pushing past, but also possibly attracting Troft attention. Worse, if any of the people who'd had a clear look at him were still in that area, he might even find himself being pointed out to the invaders.

  The thought of being killed by aliens who had invaded his world was bad enough. The thought of being betrayed to those aliens by his own people was far worse.

  He was still trying to figure out what to do when a hand abruptly grabbed his arm.

  Reflexively, he twisted around, trying to break the grip. But instead of letting go, the hand tugged back, yanking him nearly off his feet and spinning him all the way around.

  He found himself staring into the angry eyes of a medium-tall, heavyset man. "You stupid idiot," the man snarled, just barely loud enough for Lorne to hear. "What the hell do you think you're doing?"

  "Who are you?" Lorne demanded. Or tried to demand, anyway. The words came out sounding more like a nervous plea than an order.

  "Name's Emile," the man said. He glanced around, then gave Lorne's arm another tug, this one lifting him a couple of centimeters clear of the pavement, and started pulling him through the crowd toward the side of the street. "Come on. We need to talk."

  Chapter Nine

  With a start, Jody woke up from her nightmare--the third, by her slightly foggy count, of the long night.

  For a minute or two she lay still, her brain trying to work through the horrifying images of the dream, her mouth working moisture into an unusually bad taste, her eyes gazing upward at the blackness of the tent roof above her, her ears sifting through the eerie and dangerous sounds of the Caelian night.

  She had counted the muted growls of three different animals, the buzzing of probably five different types of insects, and the slow breathing of Geoff and Freylan beside her when she suddenly realized that there was one sound that she should have been hearing but wasn't.

  Her father's breathing wasn't there.

  She pushed off the cover of her sleep sack and sat up, being careful not to jostle the others. Her father, who had been sleeping beside her against the tent's door, was gone.

  "Great," she muttered und
er her breath as she slid out of the sack and rolled up onto her knees. She stepped over her father's empty sleep sack to the tent's flap, opened it a few centimeters, and peered out.

  The forest was nearly as dark as the inside of the tent, the brilliant starscape visible from the middle of Stronghold almost completely blocked off by the trees rising around them.

  But there was enough light filtering in through the vegetation to show that the trip wire barrier her father had set up was still in place, as were the two stun sticks he'd hooked to them to give any intruder a good jolt. The small clearing in front of the tent also had enough light for her to see that her father wasn't out there, either.

  She frowned. Had he heard the inconvenient midnight call, as her brother Lorne used to call it when they were children? But there were trees all over the place out there that he could use for that. Surely he wouldn't have chosen one that took him out of sight of the tent.

  Steeling herself, she slipped outside into the narrow area between the tent and the trip wires, being very careful not to touch the latter. "Dad?" she called softly.

  There was no answer. But as the sound of her voice faded away, it seemed to her that there was a noticeable dip in the volume of growls, chirps, and scurryings around her. The creatures of the Caelian night had been made freshly aware of her presence among them. Setting her teeth, trying to watch everywhere at once, she slowly bent down and disengaged one of the stun sticks from the barrier. Holding it well away from her body, she straightened up again--

  "That's probably not a good idea," a calm voice said from behind her.

  If she'd been fully awake, Jody reflected, she probably would have jumped straight over the trip-wire barrier in front of her from a standing start, and with half a meter's clearance. But with her brain and body still half numb with interrupted sleep, she didn't even twitch. Raising the stun stick higher, she turned toward the voice.

  The man was perched on top of one of the sections of the log-and-sapling wall Jody's father had built around the tent yesterday when he'd been working off his frustration. She couldn't see much of the stranger's face in the dim light, but from his voice and overall silhouette she guessed he was young, probably in his mid-twenties.

  And from the way he was sitting, with all of his weight on his rear and right leg and his left leg free to move in any direction, she guessed he was probably a Cobra. "Why not?" she asked, hefting the stun stick a little. "You don't think I know how to use it?"

  "Pretty rollin' sure you don't," he said unapologetically. "You're Capitalia born and bred. Not much call for that kind of weapon back in civilization."

  "What makes you think I'm from Capitalia?" Jody countered.

  "One: your accent," he said, holding up fingers. "Two: the way you moved when you bent over to pick up the stun stick."

  "Really," Jody said, impressed in spite of herself. "All that just from the way I picked up something?"

  "Yeah," he said, and she caught a faint flicker of reflected starlight from his teeth as he grinned. "And number three: your father told us. Jody Broom, right?"

  "Jody Moreau Broom," she corrected. "I imagine a good Cobra like you remembers that name."

  "What makes you think I'm a Cobra?" he countered in turn. "Not everyone out here is, you know."

  "One: because you're not looking around right now," she said. "That means you're relying on your hearing to let you know if anything's sneaking up on us, and only Cobra audios are up to that kind of work. Two: you sit like a Cobra, with your antiarmor laser available for a quick shot. And three: my father wouldn't have left us under the care of anyone else. Where is he, by the way?"

  The man touched his fingertips to his forehead in a mock salute. "Touché, I think the term is," he said, sliding off the barrier and walking around to the front. "He's gone off to Stronghold to confer with Harli. Harli Uy, that is, the governor's son."

  "He's gone into Stronghold?"

  "No, just near it," the man corrected. "As far as I know, no one's gotten into or out of the town since the Trofts landed."

  Jody looked around, taking in the darkness around her. Caelian's daytime horrors were bad enough, and the nighttime collection was even worse.

  But she couldn't just sit here behind logs and stun sticks and Cobra guards while her father was out there in who knew what kind of danger. "I'd like to see him," she said. "Can I get someone to take me there?"

  "Sure," the Cobra said. "You can get me. He said when he left that you'd probably wake up eventually and want to join the party. Name's Kemp, by the way."

  "Nice to meet you, Kemp," Jody said, wondering uneasily just what kind of party he was talking about. Surely they weren't tackling the invading Trofts already, were they? "How far away is this party?"

  "About a kilometer," Kemp said. "Nice evening stroll. Smitty? Can you watch things here?"

  "No problem," a second voice called back from one of the trees at the edge of the small clearing. Jody peered in that direction, and was just able to make out the silhouette of another man sitting in the low branches. "You want me to call Tammling to give you a hand?"

  "No, I can handle it," Kemp said. "Just keep an eye on the other two."

  Jody looked at the tent. "Maybe we should bring them with us," she suggested.

  "Might as well let them sleep," Kemp said. "Your father said they'd had a hard day, and there's not much of anything they can do, anyway. Really not much we can do, either, until the rest of the group shows up."

  "So who are you?" Jody asked. "I mean, if you're not from Stronghold, where are you from?"

  "We're the Aerie contingent," Kemp said. "We're assuming Essbend caught Governor Uy's interrupted warning and is also on the way here, but with the comm system down there's no way to know for sure. Harli was planning on giving them until tomorrow to show up."

  "Wait a second," Jody said, feeling her eyes widen. Aerie was fifty kilometers away. "You walked all the way from Aerie?"

  "Oh, no, we came on spookers," Kemp said. "Grav-lift cycles we use for fast travel through the forest."

  "That would have been nice to have," Jody murmured, thinking about their long walk through the woods yesterday.

  Kemp snorted. "You'd have run them into a tree inside the first minute," he said. "They're nothing for amateurs to fool around with." He gestured toward the stun stick still in Jody's hand. "Speaking of which, you should probably leave that here."

  "That's okay," Jody said, putting the safety back on and clipping the weapon to her belt. "You said it's a party, and this is the closest thing I've got to a party outfit."

  "Not a good idea," Kemp said firmly. "If you want a weapon, the group's probably got a spare shotgun or rifle."

  "Never used one of those before," Jody said. "At least I've got a little experience with this."

  "Yeah, I can guess," Kemp said dubiously. "Fine--whatever. Come on--Wonderland awaits."

  "Wonderland?"

  "Everything on Caelian outside the towns, which is pretty much most of it," Kemp explained. "You probably have a different name for it in Capitalia."

  "People have lots of names for it," Jody admitted. "I like Wonderland better. So what's the plan? I lead, and you hang back a little on my right where you can protect us both?"

  "Actually, I prefer hanging a little to your left," Kemp said. "Otherwise, yes, that's the marching order. You're a fast learner."

  "Caelian's a good teacher," Jody said dryly. "We ready?"

  Kemp gestured. "After you."

  * * *

  Kemp had been joking, Jody knew, about the trip to Stronghold being a nice evening stroll. For one thing, it was the dead of the night, not evening. For another, it had taken Jody's group most of the previous day to get through the first six kilometers of their journey, and that had been in broad daylight. Covering the final kilometer would probably take most--if not all--of the rest of the night. If, the morose thought occurred to her, they made it at all.

  Only Kemp hadn't been joking.

&n
bsp; It was, very literally, the difference between night and day. Jody's father had picked his way carefully along their trail, checking every stand of trees and patch of bushes for stinging insects, watching the plants themselves for thorns and adhesives and other surprises, and above all keeping a wary eye and ear out for predators of all shapes and sizes.

  Kemp didn't do that. Any of it. He strode through the forest like he owned it, apparently in complete unconcern, his fingers nudging at the small of Jody's back in silent encouragement every time she tried to slow down the pace. Occasionally he would touch one of her shoulders or the other, pressing with his fingertips until she'd veered far enough to avoid some unseen obstacle, then easing off until the next course change.

  And every few seconds the forest would vibrate with a deep boom from his sonic, or would light up with the flash of his fingertip lasers or arcthrower as he drove off, burned, or killed yet another attacking predator or startled a spine-equipped herbivore.

  "You're good at this," she commented once as he deftly took out a saberclaw with two laser shots.

  "Like you said, Caelian's a good teacher," he said. "Quiet, now--I have to listen."

  They'd gone another hundred meters when Jody began to see a hint of blue flickers ahead of them. The flickers grew brighter, then became half-seen flashes through the foliage, and finally resolved into a group of perhaps a dozen men standing silently together beside a thick tree bole.

  Jody peered uncertainly at them, trying to figure out if her father was somewhere in the group. But before she could come to any conclusions, one of the men near the middle stirred and turned around. "I thought that was probably you," Paul said heavily. "I wish sometimes you were more for sleeping in."

  "Never can unless I'm in my own bed," Jody said, frowning as she stepped up to him. She could feel the sense of unwelcomeness around her, almost as thick as the darkness. "Is there a problem? I mean, aside from the obvious? Kemp said you'd invited me to this party."

  "That was before I had a full grasp of the situation," Paul said. One of the other men half turned and fired his laser at something, and in the brief flash Jody saw that her father's face was as tense as his voice. "Maybe it would be best if Kemp took you back to the camp."