Cobra Guardian

  He reached the first landing and eased the door open a crack. Beyond was a long corridor, again bathed in the nighttime orange, that seemed to stretch the entire width of the ship. There were several doors leading off in both directions, but none of them were open and he could hear no sounds of activity nearby. Closing the door again, he continued up.

  He'd made it another half flight of steps, and was nearly to the midway landing, when the door one deck above him opened with a soft clang. A pair of Trofts, talking together in low voices, strode onto the landing and started down.

  Frantically, Lorne reversed direction, heading back down toward the landing and the door below. But before he'd taken more than a couple of steps he knew he'd never make it in time, certainly not silently, certainly not without the approaching Trofts spotting his movement through the grillwork of the steps. The only way he was going to avoid being caught was to hide.

  And in a bare stairwell, there was only one possible place to do that.

  Pressing against the guardrail, he crouched motionlessly as he watched the Trofts come down the section of stairway above and to his right, heading toward the landing he'd just retreated from. He waited until they were two steps from the landing, then leaped up to the underside of their part of the stairway. His reaching fingers slipped into the grillwork they had just passed, getting a firm grip on the mesh. He pulled his body up beneath the stairs and swung his legs up and wedged his feet against the supports on either side of the steps. Pressing as close as he could to the underside of the steps, he froze.

  The Trofts, their attention focused on their footing and conversation, never saw a thing. As Lorne held his breath, they made the turn around the landing and started down the steps beside him, the winglike radiator membranes on the backs of their arms brushing past barely half a meter from Lorne's own shoulder. He watched as they passed the vehicle bay door and continued one deck farther down before leaving the stairway and heading though the door back into the main part of the ship.

  Lorne waited until the faint reverberations of the closing door had faded away and silence again filled the stairwell. Then, with a sigh of relief, he released his feet from their perch, got them back on the guardrail, and let himself back onto the other section of switchback. Wiping some of the sweat off his forehead, he continued on up to the door from which the two Trofts had entered the stairway.

  The corridor beyond the door looked a lot like the one Lorne had seen one deck lower. With one difference: midway along this one was an open door. Notching up his audios, Lorne picked up the sound of low voices and the hum of machinery coming from that direction. He glanced up and down the stairway one final time and slipped into the corridor. Moving silently to the open door, he eased an eye around the jamb.

  The room was a long one, nearly as long as the vehicle bay downstairs, though about a quarter of the way back it was cut into two sections by a thick transparent glass or plastic partition. On Lorne's side, in the smaller part, were three sets of curved monitor banks, each with twenty displays, each bank also including a full panel of controls. One of the panels was positioned straight back from the door, with the other two angled off to either side. The two Trofts he'd heard were sitting at the central and right-hand banks. Between them was a rolling heat cart on which sat a pot of simmering light-brown liquid that gave off a warm, spicy aroma.

  In the larger part of the room, beyond the partition, were a pair of repair and fueling stations and two racks of two-meter-long, armored, dartlike machines equipped with floatwings and oversized sensor arrays.

  Lorne took a deep breath. Perfect. Now if he could just get a good look at the monitor displays and figure out what exactly the observation drones were set to look for, he could start finding a way out of this place.

  He was starting to ramp up his telescopics when, behind him, he heard the sound of the stairwell door starting to open.

  There was no time to think, and only one place to go. Slipping around the doorjamb into the monitor room, he took a long step to his left and dropped into a crouch beside the couch of the unoccupied console, pulling the couch as much in front of him as he could.

  The footsteps were coming closer. Lorne froze in place, hoping that the newcomer would continue on past and go off somewhere else on his errand.

  With a rustle of radiator membranes, a Troft carrying a covered tray walked into the room.

  The Troft tech at the central console swiveled around. [The time, it is overripe,] he said in cattertalk as he impatiently beckoned the newcomer toward him. [The view, was it sufficiently rewarding?]

  [The meal, it was the only view I saw,] the newcomer countered stiffly. [The boredom out there, it is intense.]

  [The boredom in here, it is likewise,] the tech at the other console said, also turning to face the newcomer. [The humans, they are hardly the danger we were warned of.]

  [The other humans, perhaps it is they to whom the legends refer,] the newcomer suggested as the three Trofts busied themselves with the contents of the tray, which seemed to consist of some sort of small snack cakes. [Our strength, we waste it here.]

  Keeping half an eye on them, Lorne rose a little higher from behind the couch and keyed in his telescopics.

  The views on the monitors seemed to be of three types. One group, consisting of only a handful of displays, were set at a relatively low altitude and were stationary. Another, slightly larger group were ground-level and moving. The third group, which included the majority, were high-altitude and also moving. Another group of monitors were black, possibly the readouts from sensors that were only useful in space or atmospheric travel.

  The first set of images, Lorne realized after a moment, were giving the view from the upper parts of the ship itself, probably from the weapon cluster wings, guarding the approaches to the Trofts' mobile fortress. The second group were more obvious: they were coming from the transport patrols as they wended their way through the ship's assigned territory. The third set were from the drones.

  Lorne studied that last group, trying to figure out exactly what he was seeing. He could see the landscape stretching out across the displays, complete with houses, streets, trees, streetlights, industrial buildings, and some of the streams that fed into Crystal Lake to the west. The views seemed to overlap for a complete medium-altitude coverage, and on some of them he could see a bright mark or two that he tentatively identified as the roving Troft carriers.

  And that was it. There were no individual heat signatures, no small-scale movement readings, not even any overall location patterns or flow data. Nothing that would give the invaders any hint that four humans were making a surreptitious journey across their freshly conquered land.

  [--replace, and my post, I will return to it.]

  Lorne snapped his attention back to the Troft conversation, and the sudden realization that he'd pushed his luck too far. The Troft who had brought in the tray had shifted his footing, and while his attention was still on the two at their consoles it was clear he was about to turn back to the door.

  At which point he would be looking straight at Lorne.

  Kill them! the frantic thought shot across Lorne's mind, the words as startling as they were appalling. Never in his life had he been angry enough or frightened enough to even consider killing someone, not even an alien.

  But even as the fear of discovery flooded through him, the cold logic of the situation came in right on top of it. Even if none of the Trofts managed to cry out before they died, killing them would send bodies flying or falling all over the place, and he'd already noted how well these metal decks conducted sound. Even if no one heard and came running, someone would eventually come to relieve these posts, and the resulting outcry and manhunt would eliminate any chance of getting Treakness to the spaceport. Lorne's only hope was to escape from the room and from the ship without being seen, and the only way to do that now would be to create a distraction.

  His eyes fell on the rolling heat cart and the pot of simmering brown liquid
.

  There was no time to come up with anything better. Aiming his torso toward the pot, he activated his sonic.

  The Troft with the tray had finished his conversation and had turned nearly to face Lorne when the pot shattered.

  The three Trofts screeched in unison as they scrambled to get out of the way of the shards of glass and the hot brown liquid flying everywhere. With the aliens' full attention now turned in that direction, Lorne slipped out of the room, and a few seconds later was back in the relative safety of the stairway.

  Earlier that day, outside Treakness's apartment building, he'd noted that the Troft ships had small ground-level doors at the bow. If he could get down there without being caught, maybe he could exit through one of them.

  Of course, at that point he would still be in view of the weapon cluster cameras. But with the Trofts in the monitor room busy cleaning up the shattered pot, he could hopefully get clear before they were in any condition to take notice of his departure.

  But even with the aliens' obvious contempt for the people they'd just conquered, they weren't being stupid about it. As Lorne pressed his ear to the lowest stairway door, he heard at least four different voices chatting casually to each other. The Trofts might not have sentries standing guard in the middle of spiny territory, but they were cautious enough to have those soldiers in position to act should something out there require it. Unless Lorne was willing to take on the whole bunch of them, he wasn't getting out this way. Grimacing, he retraced his steps up the stairway and returned to the vehicle bay.

  The room was still deserted, whoever was in charge having apparently decided that repairs on the damaged carrier could wait until morning. Keeping an ear cocked for the sound of unexpected arrivals, Lorne made his way through the equipment and vehicles to the end where he'd entered. If he could find the controls to lower the ramp, he might still have time to get away before the Trofts upstairs finished their cleanup duty.

  He'd found the board and was trying to figure out the controls when there was the sudden whine of motors and the ramp began lowering all by itself. The cool outside air flooded over him, and as it did the whine of the ramp's motors was joined by the rumble of a larger, heavier engine.

  One of the Troft carriers was coming home.

  Once again, there was no time to think it through. The ramp had already swiveled a third of the way down. A few more seconds, and the carrier would be on its way up. Half a minute after that, there would be Trofts stomping all around the bay. Lorne either had to hide, or he had to find a way to take advantage of the narrow window he'd been given.

  And as he stepped to the edge of the hatchway, it suddenly occurred to him that the window was narrower than he'd first realized. The carrier's headlights aimed mostly forward and down, he'd noted earlier, and as long as the vehicle was on the street, the top of the ramp was mostly out of their range.

  But the minute those front wheels hit the ramp and angled up, the headlights would be aimed squarely into the bay. If Lorne wasn't out of sight by then, he would be nailed like a gan fly against a white wall.

  Clenching his teeth, wondering distantly if warfare was always this reckless and unplanned, he crouched down inside the bay with his back to the edge of the ramp, and as the far end of the ramp thudded onto the street, he frog-hopped a meter out onto the near end, then gave a second hop backwards that took him off the edge of the ramp into empty space. As he started to fall, he grabbed the edge with both hands, holding on just long enough for his body to rotate around the pivot points and swing underneath the ramp. At the inwardmost part of the swing, he let go and dropped to the pavement five meters below. His knee and ankle servos absorbed the impact, and for the moment he was safe.

  But only for the moment. Right now he was out of sight of both the carrier's driver and the ship-mounted cameras, but as soon as the carrier reached the bay and the ramp swung up again he would be right back to the fly/wall predicament. His only hope was to take off right now and assume the Trofts in the monitor room would be focusing so much of their attention on the incoming vehicle that they wouldn't pay attention to any other movement.

  It wasn't a good plan, and he knew it. The Trofts up there might be bored, but it was pretty unlikely they would be so inattentive that they could fail to see a human running madly away from the vicinity of their ship. But it was all he had, and waiting until the carrier was gone and the ramp was back in place would be even worse.

  He was bracing himself for an all-or-nothing sprint when he heard a soft sound behind him.

  And as his nanocomputer took over his servos and threw him to the side a spine leopard leaped past, its extended leg spines coming close enough to brush through the hair at the side of his head.

  Reflexively, Lorne swiveled around on his hip, bringing his antiarmor laser to bear as he flicked a target lock onto the predator's head. The spine leopard braked to a halt and spun around, its eyes glittering eerily in the shadow of the ramp angling down above it. Its jaws opened halfway, and it lowered itself in preparation for another try.

  And with a sudden rush of adrenaline, Lorne realized that maybe he had his ticket out of here.

  He froze in place, half sitting and half lying as he waited for the spiny to make its move. The predator, perhaps sensing something was wrong, also hesitated, its eyes boring into Lorne's. Then, opening its jaws the rest of the way, it leaped.

  Lorne waited until it was nearly to him before triggering his antiarmor laser. His leg swung up and there was a brief flash of blue just as the spiny slammed into his foot, the impact shoving Lorne half a meter backward along the pavement. The animal dropped with a thud to the ground, and as it did so Lorne heard the engine noise from the carrier above him change pitch as the vehicle finished its climb and rolled into the equipment bay. Jumping back to his feet, Lorne grabbed the dead spiny's front legs, being careful not to impale his hands on the spines, and flung the carcass across his shoulders like a heavy backpack.

  And as the ramp began to swing up again, he bent over at the waist, crouched down as far as he could, and took off.

  The first fifty meters were the hardest. He ran it in a terrified cold sweat, his feet trying to match the lope of a running spine leopard, his brain screaming the fact that his imitation wasn't even close, his back crawling with anticipation of the heavy laser that would surely cut through any second now, wiping him out of existence before any of his senses could even register the attack.

  But the attack didn't come. He reached the side of the street and ran up onto the nearest lawn, crossing it and darting between two of the houses. Reaching the rear, he leaped over a fence the way a spiny would and no non-Cobra could hope to accomplish. He passed through another row of houses and loped onto and across the next street, angling a little to cut behind a row of trees that would momentarily shield him from the Troft cameras and lasers. Once behind the trees, he changed direction again, staying in their shadow as he angled toward the next row of houses.

  Only then, as the fear-induced sweat began to dry, did he finally begin slowing his pace a little to something less frenetic. Whether the Trofts had missed the reflection of his brief laser flash in the glare of the carrier's headlights, or whether they'd seen it and attributed the flicker to something else, it was clear that they'd been completely taken in by Lorne's sheep's-clothing ruse.

  The tension had almost faded, and Lorne was starting to congratulate himself on his cleverness and his luck, when two spine leopards appeared out of nowhere and jumped him.

  He managed to discourage them without using his lasers, dodging their attacks and throwing servo-powered punches and kicks in return until they both gave up and left in search of easier prey. He wasn't so lucky with the next attack, though, and was forced to use his fingertip lasers and even a short arcthrower burst to finally put the spine leopards down. Again, while it seemed impossible that the Trofts hadn't spotted the brief battle, there wasn't any obvious response.

  He'd made it halfway through another
block of darkened houses when it belatedly occurred to him that the lack of obvious response didn't necessarily mean the lack of response.

  Ahead was a sculpted bush. He dropped down beside it, freezing in place and keying his opticals and audios to full power. In the near distance he could hear the sounds of a pair of Troft transports, much softer than he'd usually heard them, as if they had been put on some kind of stealth mode. It was hard to tell, but they seemed to be coming up on both sides of him, working their way toward the area where he'd last fired his arcthrower.

  He tilted his head back and studied the sky above him. One of the observation drones was hovering nearly overhead, while two more were moving into the area from opposite directions.

  "Damn," he muttered under his breath. His plan had been to make his way to the industrial park Koshevski had mentioned and try to cobble together something that he could use to protect Treakness and the others from spine leopard attacks during the long walk the rest of the way to the spaceport.

  But it was clear the Trofts knew or at least suspected a Cobra was working the neighborhood. The drones up there might not be programmed to watch for movement, but they clearly knew laser and arcthrower blasts when they saw them. And if there was one thing certain, Lorne would never make it to the industrial park without having to use at least one of those weapons again. Whatever he was going to put together, he was going to have to do it right here in this neighborhood, with whatever resources he could find.

  Or rather, not in this neighborhood, but whichever neighborhood he could find to escape to. Mentally marking the locations of the two approaching carriers, he slipped away from the concealing bush and turned back toward the Troft sentry ship.

  The dead spine leopard he'd used as camouflage was right where he'd dropped it during that first predator attack. Slinging it on his back again, he headed north, moving as casually as he could. The dead spine leopard's residual heat profile should help protect him from whatever infrared sensors the Trofts in the carriers were using, but rapid, panicky movement was even more eye-catching than heat profiles, and the last thing he could afford right now was to catch any of the Trofts' eyes.