Cobra Slave

  “I wish I knew,” Reivaro said heavily. “We were holding our own when our task force left Asgard. But that was eight months ago. A lot can happen in eight months.”

  Lorne took a step toward the desk, forcing back the reflexive flicker of sympathy. His infrareds were indicating a reasonable degree of sincerity on Reivaro’s part, which was a point in his favor. But even sincerity, fear, and patriotism combined could never justify shooting down three Cobras in cold blood. “I’ll ask one more time,” he said. “Where is my mother?”

  “I don’t know,” Reivaro said. “Trust me: if I knew, I’d tell you.” Another half-smile. “If only because a rescue mission as insane as your incursion here tonight would give us another opportunity to catch you.”

  “You may still get that chance,” Lorne said, stepping backwards toward the door. His numbers were counting rapidly down, and it was time to go. “See you later, Colonel.”

  A minute later he was slipping through the darkened Archway streets, his opticals on night-vision, his audios primed for the sounds of the inevitable pursuit.

  So his hope of finding and freeing his father had been dashed. Still, that had never been more than a faint hope to begin with. The more reasonable goal, the one that had offered the greater long-term possibilities, had been achieved.

  He’d slipped into the enemy’s stronghold without being detected. He’d gone straight to the top of the command structure, rattled Reivaro’s cage, and demonstrated that the colonel and his Marines weren’t nearly as invincible and infallible as they thought they were.

  It was a bold stratagem, and a risky one. But if Lorne had learned anything from the war on Qasama it was that prodding the enemy into reaction instead of giving him time for careful thought was the first step toward victory.

  And a little misdirection never hurt, either.

  Yates was waiting at the rendezvous spot when Lorne returned to the river flowing its serene way through the center of town. With him, to Lorne’s relief, was Lorne’s mother. “One mother, delivered as promised,” Yates said, gesturing to her as Lorne came up.

  “Thank you,” Lorne said, fighting back the impulse to rush to his mother and giver her a hug. With all of them still eyeball-deep in enemy territory, a display of affection didn’t seem appropriate. “I owe you.”

  “Get these people out of my factory and out of Archway and we’ll call it even,” Yates said tartly. “Good luck.”

  He brushed past Lorne and disappeared into the darkness. “Over here,” Lorne said, taking Jin’s arm and leading her to the trash bin where he’d stashed the scuba gear. “Hope you’re up for a little swim.”

  “Sounds refreshing,” she said. “Is it just the two of us?”

  “For now, anyway,” Lorne said, feeling his stomach tighten. Her voice was calm enough, and he could hear the relief and gratitude that he’d come for her.

  But there was a grim sadness there, too. A sadness, and a deep weariness of mind and soul. She would do what he told her to do and go where he led, but her mind wasn’t up to the task of making decisions.

  And Lorne realized that, for possibly the first time in his life, he was the person in charge. Of everything.

  It was a strange and vaguely disturbing idea. Throughout his childhood and teen years his parents had been the ones who made the decisions in the family. After that had come the Cobra academy, with senior officers and instructors in command, and then his assignment in DeVegas province under Commandant Ishikuma. Even during the Troft invasion there had always been someone else with strings on him, whether it was Senior Governor Treakness on Aventine, Harli Uy on Caelian, or the Qasaman commanders he’d worked with in Azras.

  But those strings had now been cut. Jin was exhausted with age, the lingering aftereffects of brain surgery, the capture of her husband, and just plain too much fighting. There were no seasoned superiors for Lorne to answer to or seek advice from. He was on his own, standing against an enemy that by all rights he should never have had to face at all.

  But that was how it was going to be. The Dominion of Man, in its infinite wisdom, had decided that it was time for the Cobra Worlds’ century of autonomy and freedom to come to an end.

  It was up to Lorne to convince them otherwise.

  They finished suiting up in silence. “Where are we going?” Jin asked as Lorne led them around the barrier and over the bank into the river.

  “You’ll see,” he said. “Follow me.”

  #

  The first thing Jody saw as she rose slowly back to consciousness was Kemp’s frowning face hanging in the air over her. “Do I look that bad?” she murmured.

  He smiled. But the smile only touched his lips, leaving the rest of the frown still in place. “Hardly,” he said, trying for a light touch and not coming even close to succeeding. “Never, really. How do you feel?”

  Jody hunched her shoulders and experimentally moved her arms and legs. There were some bruises along her side, especially where she’d landed on the gas canister, but otherwise everything seemed in proper working condition. “Fine,” she told Kemp. “I gather it worked.”

  “Oh, it worked, all right,” he said, the brief moment of lightness gone without a trace. “We’re the masters of the Dominion of Man Courier Ship Squire, or however the proper title goes. The rest of the Dominion people have been collected and they’re being sent in small groups back to Stronghold.” He made a face. “All except the two stashed in the gunbays. So far, they’re refusing to come out.”

  “What are you going to do about them?”

  “For now, we’re just leaving them there,” Kemp said. “Thanks to you, we’ve got everyone we need already inside, so there aren’t going to be any useful targets for them to shoot at. Eventually, I figure they’ll get bored enough or hungry enough to come out and surrender.”

  “Or you could cut your way in.”

  “If we want to bother,” Kemp said. “But the doors are being watched, so they can’t come inside and make any trouble. Anyway, Tamu and the rest are going to be housed in Stronghold for a day or two while more permanent quarters are being prepared for them in Aerie.” He gestured. “Meanwhile, the two pilots are sitting in the CoNCH under the spell of one of Omnathi’s concoctions and they’re showing Rashida Vil and Smitty how to fly this bird.”

  Jody cocked an eyebrow. “Smitty’s learning how to fly?”

  Kemp shrugged. “He says he always wanted to learn. Personally, I think he just likes hanging out with Rashida. Anyway, Omnathi thinks we’ll be able to plug in the course codes from your recorder and head out for Qasama by evening.”

  “Sounds great,” Jody said, eyeing him closely. “What’s the bad news?”

  Kemp sighed. “We’d hoped to do this without further bloodshed. Unfortunately, that turned out to be impossible. Specifically, the four Marines who were escorting Omnathi and Rashida to the ship are dead.”

  A sudden memory flashed to Jody’s mind: the Marine who’d captured her casually mentioning that the approaching group would be immune to Qasaman sleep gas. “The gas couldn’t stop them,” she murmured.

  “Right,” Kemp said grimly. “Turned out they had filters built into those helmets of theirs. They took down two of Cobras we’d sent as escort, and were on their way to frying Ghushtre and the other Qasamans when we stopped them.”

  Jody felt her throat tighten as she thought back to the display of firepower the Marines had demonstrated back in the Government Building conference room. “How many more did that cost us?”

  “None,” Kemp said. “Do you remember Governor Uy mentioning something called Damocles? Basically, it was supposed to be our last-ditch hole card for future trouble. We took a heavy laser off the more-or-less intact Troft ship and loaded it and a power supply into one of our air-transport vans.”

  “You made yourselves a gunboat,” Jody murmured, an eerie feeling running through her. As far as she knew, the Cobra Worlds had never had any kind of serious combat weaponry before. “Sounds a little da
ngerous.”

  “Not as much as you’d think,” Kemp said reluctantly. “Or depending on your point of view, a lot more than you’d guess. Because after Tamu picked you up and started trying to strong-arm us into trading you for Shahni Omnathi, we…well, we sort of added in a Qasaman targeting system.”

  Jody frowned. “You mean one of the systems in their combat suits? But I thought those were keyed into the sensors in a Djinni’s eye lenses. How did you—?”

  She broke off as the sudden awful truth hit her like a gut punch. “You had a Djinni firing the laser?”

  “Yeah,” Kemp said, not sounding any happier about it than Jody felt. “It wasn’t like we had much choice. Cobra targeting systems aren’t designed to handle external weaponry. Djinn systems are.”

  “And so now Qasamans have fired directly on Dominion personnel?”

  “And you can imagine how Uy’s feeling about that,” Kemp said. “Still, if it comes to a diplomatic crisis, the fact remains that the Marines fired on us first.”

  “That’s not the point,” Jody ground out. “We’re Cobra Worlds people, which means we’re also Dominion people. Whatever happens between us probably comes under internal legal jurisdiction. But the Qasamans aren’t Dominion. Firing on Dominion Marines probably constitutes an act of war.”

  “I know,” Kemp said with a sigh. “And I have no idea how Uy going to cover everyone’s butts on this one. But step one is to head for the tall grass of Qasama along with every human being who knows how to find it.” He seemed to brace himself. “That means you, too.”

  “That’s okay,” Jody said. Her anger was fading, leaving only frustration behind. “I wasn’t going anywhere with the gunbays still manned, anyway. And it’s not like I was doing anything useful on Caelian. Maybe things will be different on Qasama.”

  “What are you talking about?” Kemp asked, frowning. “You did great work on this one. If you hadn’t been aboard, we’d have had to blast our way into the control room.”

  “Which I know now you were perfectly capable of doing,” Jody countered. “Especially with a Troft laser to play with.”

  “And how many more people would a frontal assault have cost?” Kemp retorted. “Not to mention giving Tamu time to wreck the ship so that it might never fly again?”

  “Maybe,” Jody muttered reluctantly.

  “I know how you feel,” Kemp said. “But we all have our parts to play. Sometimes they don’t feel like much, but it often turns out that they’re absolutely vital, and they’re parts that only we can play. For whatever it’s worth.” He stood up. “Anyway, I should probably let you get a little more rest. I’m told that Qasaman sleep gas hits a person pretty hard, especially the first time.”

  “Hopefully, I won’t ever have to see what the second time is like,” Jody said.

  “Agreed,” Kemp said. “See you later.”

  For a long time Jody lay quietly, listening to the distant rumble of the engines and the occasional footsteps or muffled conversations as people walked past her door. Maybe Kemp was right. Maybe there was a part in this that only she could play.

  And maybe, down deep, she knew what that part was.

  She found Omnathi in the CoNCH control room, standing behind Rashida and Smitty as they studied the control board they’d spent the past couple of hours learning how to operate. Other men—some Qasaman, others Caelian—were scattered elsewhere around the room, working at other consoles or conversing quietly over comboards or status displays. “Ah—Jody Moreau,” Omnathi said, nodding to her in greeting. “I trust you’re fully recovered from your ordeal?”

  “I am, Your Excellency,” she said, making the Qasaman sign of respect.

  Omnathi smiled, making the sign back to her. “I’m pleased,” he said. “I’m looking forward to introducing you to the world that your family has done so much to save.”

  “As I’m looking forward to meeting your people,” Jody said. “A question, if I may?”

  He gestured. “Of course.”

  “Cobra Kemp tells me that without my help we couldn’t have captured the Squire intact, which would have left you marooned on Caelian and at the mercy of Commander Tamu and the Dominion,” she said. “Do you concur with that opinion?”

  “I do,” Omnathi said, frowning slightly.

  “Then it seems to me that you and Qasama owe me a favor.”

  “We owe you far more than that,” Omnathi agreed. “Speak your request.”

  The room had gone silent. “I have reason to believe my brother Merrick was taken captive by some of those who invaded our worlds,” Jody said. “I also believe I may have the location of the world where he was taken. My request is this.” She gestured around her. “Once we’ve delivered you and your people to Qasama, I would like permission to take this ship and go look for him.”

  “By yourself?” Omnathi asked calmly.

  Jody swallowed, feeling suddenly a bit off-balance. She’d expected to have to argue a lot longer about the ship before they even got to questions of personnel. “Well, no, of course not,” she stammered. “I’ll at least need a pilot.”

  “You got one,” Smitty spoke up.

  “You have two,” Rashida corrected. “With your permission, of course, Your Excellency.”

  “And the rest?” Omnathi asked, his eyes still on Jody.

  Jody frowned. “The rest of the crew?”

  “The rest of your request,” Omnathi said. “There is one more part to it, is there not?”

  Jody gazed back, a creepy feeling shivering the back of her neck. She’d heard stories about Omnathi’s borderline-psychic ability to read the people around him. But until now, she’d never experienced it for herself. “Yes,” she said, bracing herself, suddenly conscious that she was standing right on the edge. The options and decisions were still ahead of her. She could still back away.

  Only she couldn’t. Because she was Merrick’s last hope. “Wherever my brother is, he’s in danger,” she continued. “If I’m going to have any chance of freeing him, I need to be ready to face down that same danger. As ready as I can possibly be.”

  She straightened up and looked Omnathi straight in the eye. “Your Excellency…I wish to become a Cobra.”

  #

  The stars were blazing down from overhead by the time Merrick reached the rock dome Anya had pointed out.

  He found her waiting beneath the branches of a prickly-looking mushroom-shaped bush. “I’d almost given up hope,” she said quietly as he sank to the grass beside her.

  “Sorry,” he apologized. “I wanted to make sure all the Troft activity was going on somewhere else before I came. You made it down okay, obviously?”

  “There were no problems,” she said. “An intact wing can be easily landed in a small area.”

  “At least by someone who knows what they’re doing.”

  “Yes.” She paused. “They will suffer for what we did today.”

  “Gangari?”

  “Yes,” she said. “The masters will inflict terrible punishment on them.”

  “It’s not right,” Merrick murmured. “They did nothing to help us. Hell, most of them never even saw us between the time we came in and the time we left.”

  “You seek logic and justice,” she said tiredly. “You’ll find neither on Muninn.”

  Merrick winced. “I know. I’m sorry.”

  For another moment they sat together in silence. “Do you remember Henson Hillclimber speaking of dark memories?” she said at last.

  “Yes,” Merrick said. “I’ve been wondering what that referred to.”

  “Many years ago a group of residents attempted to free Gangari from the masters,” she said. “The effort failed, of course.”

  “And the instigators punished, no doubt.”

  “The instigators were not punished, for they could not be found,” Anya said. “They had slipped away into the night. Those who were left behind were thus forced to accept the full force of the masters’ reprisals. Many of the young were tak
en from them that day. Some were sent to the Games. Others were taken across the stars and sold.”

  “Including you?”

  “Yes.”

  Merrick nodded heavily. And now the instigators of this fresh act of rebellion had likewise disappeared into the forest. The point of Anya’s story was painfully clear. “I’m sorry, Anya,” he said. “I wish we could help them. But aside from giving up and turning ourselves in, I can’t think of anything we can do.”

  “I know,” Anya said. “But that wasn’t why I told you the story. I told you because the ones who led the failed rebellion were my parents.”

  Merrick stared at her. “Your parents? You mean—?” He broke off as the kicker suddenly hit him. “They ran off and left you there? Knowing full well that the Trofts would take their anger out on you?”

  “Yes,” Anya said, and Merrick could hear the echoes of old bitterness in her voice. “I don’t know why. I’ve never known why. I know only that the masters will also remember, and that my part in today’s events will weigh all the more heavily on their judgment against Gangari.”

  Abruptly, she got to her feet. “It’s time.”

  “Where are we going?” Merrick said, standing up beside her.

  “To a place where the masters will not find us,” she said, looking up at the stars and then turning to face southwest. “A place that has proven its ability to stay hidden from their gaze.”

  “Sounds perfect,” Merrick said, nodding.

  “Yes,” Anya said, striding off into the darkness. “Pray that they will accept us.”

  “There’s someone else living there?” Merrick asked, hurrying to catch up. “Anyone you know?”

  “I knew them once,” she said. “Or I thought I did.” She hissed out a sigh. “Once, they were my parents.”

  #

  Barrington had estimated that once the Hermes was prepped it wouldn’t cost them more than ten minutes to break out of hyperspace, drop the courier, and break in again.

  In actual fact, the drop took only seven.

  “So that’s it,” he commented to Lieutenant Meekan as he gave the CoNCH displays a final check. The break-out and break-in had both gone perfectly, and the Dorian was once again on track toward Qasama.