"Maybe just two," Freylan said. "If your mother can--oh, God."
"What is it?" Jody asked tensely.
"It's your mom," Freylan said, his voice rigid with horror. "She's on the aft wing. She's on the wing."
"What?" Jody gasped, her breath catching in her throat. "But didn't she see that--?"
"Of course she saw," Freylan said. "She's going to do it anyway."
"No," Jody breathed, her stomach churning as she watched the distant figure hunch forward on the small wing. "She can't."
But of course she could. And she would. Because there was danger, and war. And because Jin Moreau Broom was first and foremost a Cobra.
A Cobra.
It was a small chance. But it was the only one Jody had. Leaping to the window, she flung it all the way open. "Cobras!" she shouted as loudly as she could, knowing that there were still Trofts inside Stronghold's wall who might shoot at her and not giving a damn. "Cobra on the ship wing--needs assist and rescue!"
She was filling her lungs to repeat the message when the wing exploded.
"No!" she screamed, all of her pain and fear and rage compressed into that single word. The fireball was dissipating--
"There!" Freylan snapped. "There--way up there!"
Jody's eyes darted back and forth across the starry sky, her heart thudding in her throat.
And then, suddenly, she saw her mother, arcing high overhead, a piece of the wing soaring along beneath her as if flying in formation. She was tumbling slowly head over heels, her arms and legs splayed out limply, unconscious or injured.
Or dead.
Time seemed to stretch out. Helplessly, hopelessly, Jody watched as her mother reached the top of her arc and almost lazily curved over and started down again. She was still tumbling slowly, and a small, detached part of Jody's mind wondered how she would be turned when she hit the ground. Not that it probably even mattered. An impact from that height would probably kill her no matter how she landed. If she wasn't dead already.
She was picking up speed now, and Jody saw that she would land just inside the wall a little ways to the west, in an open area where Jody would be able to see her all the way to the end. If, that is, Jody had the courage to stay with her mother the whole way. Would she have that courage, or would she turn away, abandoning her mother to die alone, with no one even watching? A movement to her left caught her eye, and she shifted her eyes that direction--
To see a figure jump up onto the wall from somewhere outside and launch himself upward in a powerful Cobra leap aiming straight for Jody's mother.
Jody had barely enough time to tense up as the two arcing paths approached each other. The two figures intersected--
"He's got her," Freylan crowed. "He's got her!"
Jody nodded, not daring to speak, not daring to breathe. The Cobra's own upward arc had been flattened as he caught the falling body, and now both of them were falling back to earth. Jody watched, her hands tightened into fists, knowing that Cobra leg servos could absorb a lot of the force of the impending impact, but also knowing how easy it would be for her mother's rescuer to lose his balance and slam both of them facefirst onto the ground. Almost there . . .
And then they were down, the Cobra's knees bending hard with the impact, his legs simultaneously pumping as he tried to get his feet moving to catch up with his horizontal momentum.
But there was too much to be made up, and his legs were already busy trying to slow their descent, and as Jody watched she knew he wasn't going to make it. His body staggered off-balance and he started to pitch forward.
And then, suddenly, two more Cobras appeared out of nowhere, sprinting up behind the staggering figure and grabbing both him and Jin's limp body into their arms, locking the four of them together as they all ran, first stabilizing their group momentum, then braking to a fast but controlled halt.
"She's okay," Freylan said, his voice weak with relief as he handed Jody the binoculars. "I saw her blink, Jody. She's okay."
Jody pressed the binoculars to her eyes, almost afraid to hope. But he was right. Though her mother's face was flushed and burned, her eyelids were fluttering with slowly returning consciousness.
It was only then, as Jody let her eyes drift with relief and gratitude from her mother's face, that she saw that the arms still cradling Jin were clad in gloves and sleeves of scaled gray.
It wasn't one of the Cobras who had answered Jody's frantic call for help, who had raced across the battle zone, risking his own life, and leaped up from the wall to save the life of her mother.
It was one of the Qasamans.
Jody was still trying to wrap her mind around that when the forest once again lit up with laser fire.
She snapped her eyes back to the warship. The lasers from its remaining two weapons clusters were firing, all right.
But they were firing high above the forest, away from any of the Cobras.
[Soldiers of the Drim'hco'plai Demesne, I speak to them,] an amplified voice rolled across the suddenly quiet battlefield. [Our surrender, we have given it. Your surrender, you must also give it.]
"What's he saying?" Freylan asked.
Jody took a deep breath. "He's saying it's over," she said. "We've won."
For a moment Freylan seemed to ponder that. "No," he said quietly. "We may have won. But it's not over. Not by a long shot."
Chapter Twenty-One
It took the rest of the night to collect the wounded and get them under the care of Stronghold's medical personnel; to gather, disarm, and contain the Troft prisoners; and to gather and seal the dead for proper burial.
To Lorne's way of thinking, there were far too many in all three categories.
The sun was rising over the eastern forest when the word came that Harli Uy had summoned him to the Government Building for a final council of war.
The main conference room was already crowded when Lorne arrived. Harli was there, seated in the chair at the head where his father would normally be. Occupying the three chairs on either side of him were six other Caelian Cobras: Matigo, Olwen, Kemp, Tracker, and two more from the Stronghold contingent whom Lorne didn't know. Beside them to Harli's right were Lorne's parents and sister, with an empty chair between his mother and Jody that was obviously being saved for him. Facing them on the opposite side were the four Qasamans and Warrior, the Troft looking joltingly out of place among the humans. Lined up around the walls were more Cobras and a few of Stronghold's ordinary citizens, plus Croi and Nissa, who were hovering nervously behind Warrior. Behind Jody, Lorne noticed as he sat down, were Freylan and Geoff, both of them looking even more lost than Croi and Nissa did.
Lorne was apparently the last of the invited group to arrive. Even as he took his seat, Harli stirred and rose from his. "Thank you all for coming," he said, nodding first at those around the table and then acknowledging the people lining the walls. "I know you're all dead tired, and I also know there's still a lot of work to do, so I'll make this as brief as possible." He gestured to the four Qasamans. "Some of you know, others of you may not, that we have four representatives from the planet Qasama among us."
From the complete lack of reaction at Harli's announcement, Lorne concluded that everyone in the room had indeed already heard that particular news. Probably everyone in Stronghold knew it by now. "And all four of them were highly instrumental in kicking the Trofts' collective butt," he added.
"Thank you, Broom, I was getting to that," Harli said, throwing a brief glower at Lorne. "As Cobra Lorne Broom says, they were indispensable members of our attack force. In fact, I'd go further. Without them, we would almost certainly have lost the battle. We would absolutely have lost a great many more Cobras."
Lorne glanced around, noting all the nodding heads. The people of Stronghold knew that, too.
"What you probably don't know," Harli continued, "is that Ifrit Siraj Akim and his people came to Caelian looking for help. Apparently the Trofts--some of the Trofts," he corrected, nodding a tacit apology to Warrior, "h
ave decided they don't like sharing this part of space with us humans. Just as Caelian and Aventine have been attacked, so also was Qasama. Ifrit Akim has therefore come here looking for help."
He looked around the room again. "Specifically, he's looking for Cobras willing to go back to Qasama with them and fight."
Lorne had expected that one to generate at least a murmur, whether of disbelief, disapproval, or dismay. The silence that instead filled the room was far more ominous.
Matigo broke the silence first. "What does your father say?" he asked.
"The governor's still in emergency surgery," Harli said. "I didn't have time to brief him on their request before he went under."
Matigo nodded and shifted his attention to the Qasamans. "How many Cobras would you need?"
"As many as are willing to come," Siraj said. "As many as you can spare."
"And therein lies the problem," Harli said heavily. "As of three days ago, before the Trofts landed, we had around seven hundred Cobras on Caelian. Even with that we were barely holding our own." He waved a hand. "As of right now, we're down over three hundred from that number, including the dead and wounded. We also have a major part of the Stronghold wall to rebuild, nearly two hundred Troft prisoners to manage, plus all the rest of Caelian's challenges to deal with."
"In other words," Siraj said, his eyes boring into Harli's, "your answer is no."
"That's not fair," Jody spoke up fiercely. "We wouldn't even be sitting here if it wasn't for them. You said that yourself. You can't just say thank you and send them away."
"What do you suggest?" Harli countered. "You've seen what we have to deal with on Caelian. How many Cobras of our current four hundred do you think we can spare?"
"That's the wrong question," Jin said, her voice less agitated than her daughter's but no less firm. "It's not a matter of what the cost will be of sending Cobras to Qasama. The real question is what the cost will be if you don't."
"Seems to me that if we're going to send our Cobras anywhere it ought to be to Aventine," one of the men along the wall muttered, his eyes hard as he stared at the four Qasamans. "They haven't been running around for fifty years swearing to destroy us."
"The situation on Qasama has changed," Siraj said evenly. "The Shahni are willing to let go of the insults of the past."
The man by the wall snorted. "Big of them," he growled.
"The Qasamans are a proud people," Jin said. "They would never ask help from someone they considered enemies. The fact that they sent Ifrit Akim here is proof that the old animosities are gone, or at least faded enough for us to try to make a new start."
"Wait a minute," Nissa spoke up from behind Warrior. "Why are we even talking about more fighting? Warrior said that once we had a victory against the invaders the Tlossies and some of the other demesnes would be willing to help us."
Warrior's radiator membranes fluttered. [A victory, this is not a sufficient one,] he said.
"What did he say?" Harli asked.
"He said this wasn't a sufficient victory," Paul spoke up. "Unfortunately, he's right."
Matigo sent a hard look at the Troft. "In whose opinion?" he growled.
"In everyone's," Paul told him. Matigo turned to him-- "Yes, I was there, too," Paul continued before the other could speak. "I saw what it cost." He waved at his heavily bandaged left leg. "I paid some of that cost myself, you know."
"The problem is that Caelian's too unimportant for anyone to care about," Harli said. "Is that what you're saying?"
"That, and the battle itself was too small for the Tlossies or anyone else to consider it genuinely significant," Paul said. "I'm sorry, but that's just how it is. A small group of humans taking down two ships' worth of Trofts could easily be considered a fluke. Especially since you had a fair amount of help from Caelian's own flora and fauna."
"What it boils down to is that there are only two places where a significant victory will be enough to get the Tlossies moving," Jin said. "Aventine and Qasama." She looked at Warrior. "Am I right?"
[A victory on either, it would be significant,] the Troft agreed.
"Well, Aventine's out," Lorne said. "Not only would we never get in past all the ships the invaders have in orbit, but the people and government there are pretty much useless."
"How dare you?" Nissa snapped. "Just because Governor-General Chintawa didn't go running out into the street with a gun you think he's useless?"
"No, I'm saying he's useless because he ordered the Cobras to stand down without even trying to fight," Lorne countered. "He also called the governors and syndics together so that he could call for a nice, neat surrender."
"He was buying time," Nissa retorted. "Buying us time, so that we could get off Aventine with--"
"I have a question," Croi spoke up suddenly from beside her. "Cobra Uy, you say you don't have enough Cobras to send to Qasama. What if we could get you some more?"
Matigo snorted. "As long as we're wishing, how about getting us a Dominion of Man naval squadron?"
"I'm serious," Croi insisted. "What if I could get you some fresh Cobras? Would you have enough then to send some of yours to Qasama?"
"How many extras are we talking about?" Harli asked.
"I can get you three hundred," Croi said.
"And how fast can you get them here?"
Croi hesitated, his eyes flicking around the room. "About five days."
"Five days?" Matigo echoed as a stunned murmur broke out among the observers.
"Relax, everyone," Harli said, raising his voice over the excited chatter. "He's talking about Viminal, which also means he's talking through his ear. Sorry to break this to you, Dr. Croi, but if the invaders bothered to hit Caelian, they certainly didn't forget about Viminal."
"I'm not talking about Viminal," Croi said, looking around the room again. "I just can't--here with all these people--"
And in that moment, the fog of fatigue around Lorne's mind seemed to part . . . and suddenly he knew what he had to do. "He's talking about Isis," he spoke up. "It's an automated--"
"Broom, shut your mouth!" Nissa snapped, stepping up to her side of the table.
"It's an automated Cobra factory currently aboard--"
"Damn you, Broom, shut up!" Nissa snarled, her face rigid with anger as she jabbed a finger at the men standing behind the Broom family. "You--Cobras--shut him up!"
"Hold," Harli said, his voice icy cold as he held up a restraining hand, his eyes locked on Lorne's. "I want to hear this."
"No," Nissa ground out. "Cobra Uy, if this man says another word--if you listen to another word--I swear I'll have you and everyone else in this room up on charges."
"On whose authority?" Paul asked mildly.
"On the authority given me by Senior Governor Tomo Treakness," she said, turning her glare on him. "Dr. Croi heard him, and so did Cobra Broom. He granted me full authority of negotiation and treaty, and named me the Cobra Worlds' representative to the universe at large."
"I don't think this is exactly what he had in mind," Croi said hesitantly.
"I don't care what he may or may not have had in mind," Nissa retorted. "What he said was that I have full Dome authority. I'm exercising that authority now."
For a long moment the room was silent. Then, Harli stirred. "Your authority and orders are noted," he said quietly. "I still want to hear it."
"Cobra Uy--"
"And if you persist in interrupting," he added, still quietly, "I'll have you removed from this room." He turned back to Lorne. "Cobra Broom?"
Lorne took a deep breath, his mind flashing back to the family dinner--was it only three weeks ago?--where they'd all discussed the ramifications of the urgent note his mother had received to go to Qasama. Even then, he remembered, the risk of treason charges had been mentioned. Somehow, he'd never really expected it to come down to that.
Apparently, it had.
"Isis is an experimental program," he said, keeping his attention fixed on Harli. Even out of the corner of his eye
he could see the fury on Nissa's face. "It's a robotic system for creating Cobras, bypassing the human surgeons. I gather it's pretty much self-contained, and I'm told it'll shorten the time necessary for equipment implantation from two weeks to five days."
Harli looked at Croi. "Has it been tested?"
"It has," Croi said. "The prototype"--he glanced at Nissa, looked hurriedly away--"is in the cargo hold of Ingidi-inhiliziyo's freighter."
"And you say it has enough equipment to make three hundred Cobras?"
"Yes." Croi hunched his shoulders. "Fewer if there's some breakage, of course."
Matigo whistled softly. "Damn, but three hundred new Cobras would be nice to have."
"I'm sure they would." Lorne braced himself. "But I'm afraid you'll have to wait for the next one." He looked at Siraj. "This one's going to Qasama."
"What?" Matigo demanded, his voice barely audible over the sudden uproar from the room.
"It has to," Lorne insisted, raising his own voice as he tried to be heard. "Listen to me. Please--listen to me."
"Quiet," Uy ordered.
The governor's son hadn't even raised his voice, Lorne noted. But within a couple of seconds the room was quiet again. "Continue, Broom," he said into the rigid silence.
"We can't win this war by ourselves," Lorne said, keeping his voice as steady as he could. "That should be obvious to everyone in this room. The Cobra Worlds haven't got the numbers, the weapons, or the industrial capability. No matter how many Cobras we have, if we try to go head to head with the invaders, we will eventually lose." He gestured toward Warrior. "The only way to win will be to persuade the Tlossies and some of the other local demesnes onto our side."
"Who've already said they won't come aboard without a major victory," Jin murmured.
"Exactly," Lorne said. "As was already stated, it has to be Aventine, or Qasama."
"So take this Cobra factory to Aventine," Matigo said.
Lorne shook his head. "We already covered that," he said. "Aventine is out."
"Because the people won't fight?" Nissa demanded bitterly.