Cobra Gamble Page 16

  The door swung open, and Jin found herself facing her son. "Lorne," she said, her eyes flicking across the hard-faced young men lined up behind him. The face just over his shoulder seemed to jump out at her—it was a face she'd seen somewhere before—

  And then the semi-familiar man pushed past Lorne through the doorway and into the room. "I greet you, Fadil Sammon," he said formally. "I am Kami Ghushtre, Ifrit of Qasama."

  Jin felt her lungs freeze. That was where she'd seen him before: in the Sollas subcity, when she and Merrick had first arrived and been hauled before Miron Akim under suspicion of collusion with the Trofts who had just landed on Qasama. Merrick had offered to show the Cobras' power as a way of proving their goodwill toward the Qasamans, and had instantly earned Ghushtre's ill will by not playing according to the young Djinni's expectations of how the demonstrations should go.

  And given the icy temperature of Ghushtre's single glance at Jin as he came into Fadil's room, it was clear he hadn't forgotten the incident, either.

  "I greet you, Ifrit Ghushtre," Fadil answered the other calmly. "How may I serve you?"

  "We would speak with you." Ghushtre looked again at Jin. "Alone."

  "May I ask what this is about?" Jin asked, making no effort to move out of his way.

  "No, you may not," Ghushtre said. "The matter is a private one, between Qasamans only."

  "Fadil Sammon's condition requires extra care," Paul pointed out. "One of us should remain in case he needs assistance."

  "He will not need assistance during the brief period of our conversation," Ghushtre countered. "We are at war, Cobra Jin Moreau. We have no time to spare for foolish chatter. You and your family will leave this room. Now."

  Jin focused on the other Djinn, still standing in orderly lines in the corridor behind Lorne. If she could signal her son, and if he could spin around and hit them with his sonic before they could react...

  "Its all right, Jin Moreau," Fadil said quietly. "You may leave. I'll be all right."

  Jin turned to look at him. His face was calm, but the tranquility had tension lurking beneath it. "Do you know what this is about?" she asked.

  He looked away from her gaze. "For the most part, yes," he said, and she had the impression that he was choosing his words carefully. "Please go now. Ifrit Ghushtre and I must speak."

  Jin took a deep breath. "We'll be outside if you need us," she said. "Paul? Do you need a hand?"

  "I've got it," Paul said. Standing up on his one good leg, he got the crutches Dr. Krites had given him into position under his arms and made his awkward way across the room to the door. Jin joined him, and with Lorne bringing up the rear they stepped out into the corridor. At a terse command from Ghushtre the rest of the Djinn filed silently past them into the room, the last one closing the door behind him.

  "Are you okay?" Jin asked, eyeing her husband. "You looked like a decrepit ninety-year-old in there."

  "You mean with these?" Paul asked, twirling one of his crutches. "No, I'm fine. Just part of my on-going philosophy of looking as harmless as possible in front of potential enemies."

  "The Djinn aren't potential enemies," Jin said firmly, wishing she completely believed that. Most of them, like Siraj Akim and Carsh Zoshak, had come around quickly enough. But there were a few like Ghushtre who were still question marks.

  "If you say so," Paul said. "Lorne? Don't."

  "Don't what?" Lorne asked.

  "You know perfectly well," Paul said with mild reproof. "You were about to casually lean your ear against the door. But don't. They asked for privacy—both of them did—and we need to honor that request."

  "Even if Fadil's in trouble?" Lorne countered. "There's something about that Ghushtre guy that sets my teeth on edge."

  "Probably because he doesn't like us," Jin told him. "Or at least he doesn't like me. Doesn't mean he won't be perfectly civil to Fadil."

  "Yeah, right," Lorne growled. "How does he know us well enough not to like us?"

  "He came in for a bit of embarrassment in front of his peers when Merrick and I first arrived," Jin said. "Not much—on a heat scale, no more than a light singeing."

  "Though of course he might remember it differently," Paul pointed out. "How did you happen across them, Lorne? I thought you were out in the forest with the new recruits."

  "I was," Lorne said. "They were heading through on a quick-march and ran into us in one of the clearings northeast of town."

  "They were heading through the forest?" Paul asked, frowning. "And from the northeast?"

  "Yes, and I don't blame them," Lorne said. "The latest scout reports say all the main roads are under constant Troft surveillance, with everything from drones flying overhead to those armored trucks parked outside the towns and at all the major intersections."

  "It's the northeast part that interests me," Paul said. "That implies they didn't come from Azras or one of the other southerly cities. Sollas, perhaps?"

  Lorne made a face. "There wasn't much left of Sollas when we flew in last week. There's probably even less now."

  "Which would make it a good place to be running from," Paul said thoughtfully. "The question is, why come here? What in the Worlds would make Fadil so important that anyone would send twenty Djinn to talk to him?"

  "Unless they're not just talking," Lorne said, moving toward the door again. "Dad, for Fadil's sake we need to find out what's going on in there."

  "Lorne—"

  "Hold it—they're coming," Jin interrupted. "Lorne?" He nodded and took a long step back.

  Just in time. A second later the door was flung open and a glowering Ghushtre strode out of the room. He stopped short, as if surprised to find the three Brooms still there, and for a moment he looked back and forth between Jin and Paul. Then, he drew himself up. "I've decided that my Djinn and I will avail ourselves of the alien equipment that now resides in the Sammon family mine," he said.

  "What equipment is that?" Paul asked cautiously.

  "Foolish games do not become you, Cobra Paul Broom," Ghushtre growled. "I refer to the Isis equipment which you and your countrymen brought from the Cobra World called Caelian." He turned to Jin and seemed to brace himself. "You'll take us there at once, that I and my Djinn may become Cobras."

  "Well, that's new," Lorne murmured.

  Jin felt her mouth go suddenly dry. If Ghushtre decided to take that as an insult, or worse, as a challenge...

  But the Djinni didn't even twitch. "You will take us to Isis, Jasmine Moreau," he said.

  "My mother's not well," Lorne said, stepping forward. "I can take you."

  "You have duties elsewhere, Lorne Moreau," Ghushtre said. "You have Cobra soldiers of your own to train. Go."

  Lorne's eyes narrowed—

  "It's all right, Lorne," Jin said quickly. "I can take them to Isis. Go back and assist Beach and McCollom."

  She could see the objections flicker across his face: how there were still unpleasant levels of dust in the parts of the mine they had to pass through to reach the Isis setup, how her dizzy spells could lead to serious injury if she stumbled against a stone wall, how suddenly fainting in the partially open lift could be even more disastrous.

  But while Lorne was her son, he was also a Cobra. He knew how to take orders, whether he liked those orders or not. "Fine," he said. "I'll see you later." With a last lingering look at Ghushtre, he turned and strode down the corridor.

  "And you, I believe," Ghushtre added, turning to Paul, "have a position of assistance to return to."

  "That's all right," Paul said. "As you said, Fadil Sammon can do without assistance for a short time. I'll come with you."

  Ghushtre's eyes lowered pointedly to his injured leg. "He may need you," he said. "You will return to him." He looked at Jin. "At your convenience, Jasmine Moreau."

  "Let me first make sure Fadil Sammon's comfortable," she told him. Without waiting for an answer, she slipped past him and Paul and hurried back into the room. The other Djinn, lined up as before behind their leader
, moved out of her way without comment or complaint.

  Fadil watched her as she crossed over to him. "Are you all right, Jin Moreau?" he asked as she stopped beside his bed.

  "I was going to ask you that," Jin said, studying his face. The tension she'd noticed when Ghushtre first arrived had abated somewhat, but lingering bits of it were still present. "What's happened? What do they want?"

  He smiled, his expression touched with sudden sadness. "What we all want," he said. "Victory."

  Jin glanced over her shoulder. "On whose terms?"

  "That's always the question," Fadil agreed. "For now, certain things must remain a mystery to you, Jin Moreau." He looked past her shoulder toward Ghushtre. "And now you must go."

  Jin sighed. "All right," she said. "But you should know that I really hate mysteries. I'll probably be worrying about it the entire rest of the day."

  "My apologies." Fadil smiled again, a more genuine one this time, then sobered. "In that case, perhaps you'll allow me to offer a more interesting puzzle. You told me earlier that the invaders had also invaded your home world of Aventine, where they released razorarms taken from Qasama into the cities. Tell me, have the forests of Aventine been emptied of similar predators?"

  "Hardly," Jin said grimly. "Those razorarms are probably the only thing that's kept the government from cancelling the Cobra project entirely."

  "Then tell me," Fadil said. "If there are razorarms available for the taking on Aventine, why are the invaders still hunting them here in the Qasaman forest?"

  Jin stared down at him. Somehow, that thought hadn't even occurred to her.

  But he was right. Why would anyone bother transporting dangerous animals all the way from Qasama to the Cobra Worlds when they had all they could ever want right there in Aventine's own expansion regions? "I don't know," she said.

  "Nor do I," Fadil said. "But I very much fear that there is more to this invasion than meets the eye. And until we know the invaders' secrets—all of their secrets—we may never fully defeat them."

  "Then I guess we'd better get busy and learn those secrets," Jin said. "Because I have no intention of letting any of those sons of chickens just walk away."

  She reached down and squeezed his hand. "Take care, and I'll see you later."

  "I'll look forward to it," Fadil said. "In the meantime, please ask Paul Broom to come in." He smiled. "We still have a chess game to finish."

  * * *

  Carsh Zoshak was lounging casually in an open-air cafe near the mine entrance when Lorne tracked him down. "Ah—Lorne Moreau," Zoshak said, waving in greeting as Lorne came up to him. "I thought you were out in the forest."

  "I was, and I have to get back," Lorne said, pulling up a chair and sitting down. "But first I wanted to give you a heads-up. You know a Djinni named Kami Ghushtre?"

  "He was one of the Sollas contingent," Zoshak said, nodding. "Why do you ask?"

  "Because he's here," Lorne told him. "He and a squad of twenty blew into Milika about an hour ago, had a short chat with Fadil Sammon, and are now on their way to meet Isis."

  Zoshak's eyes widened. "They're coming here?"

  "And apparently planning to undergo the treatment," Lorne said. "My question is, are they sincere, or could this be this a plan to destroy Isis and rid Qasama of alien influences, or some such insanity?"

  "Wait, wait, I'm losing the line of your logic," Zoshak protested. "There's no possibility that Djinni Ghushtre would make such a decision on his own. Isis is part of the treaty between Qasama and the Cobra Worlds. Only the Shahni have the power to repudiate any aspect of the treaty, including Isis."

  "That assumes there are members of the Shahni still around," Lorne pointed out. "What if there aren't?"

  "Then rule would fall to the military commanders," Zoshak said, frowning in thought. "But your question raises a second, more interesting one. If Djinni Ghushtre wouldn't dare interfere with Isis without orders, so also wouldn't he dare undergo the procedure without orders."

  "Unless, as you said, the military has taken over," Lorne pointed out grimly. "In that case, team and unit officers might have been given more autonomy than they used to have."

  "Except that Djinni Ghushtre isn't an officer," Zoshak said. "He would need to be an Ifrit to even have unit command."

  Lorne frowned. "He is an Ifrit. At least, that's how he introduced himself."

  "Really," Zoshak said, an odd tone to his voice. "Djinni Ghushtre has been made an Ifrit?"

  "That he has," Lorne confirmed. "Unless you think the rank might have been self-awarded."

  "No," Zoshak said firmly. "The other Djinn in the unit would never stand for that. He must have been granted the rank, and only Marid Miron Akim or one of the Shahni could do that. Tell me, did he know about Isis before he arrived here?"

  "I don't know," Lorne said. "But he didn't say anything about it before his chat with Fadil. And he definitely came out of the meeting looking annoyed."

  "Still, my guess is that he already knew," Zoshak said slowly. "Which would imply in turn that Siraj Akim and Ghofl Khatir did indeed make it safely to Azras."

  Lorne grimaced. Siraj and Khatir had disappeared the minute all the Isis crates were safely inside Milika, taking a small car and heading for Azras, the nearest large city, to try and make contact with whatever was left of the Qasaman government.

  But that had been eight days ago, and neither man had been heard from since. Given the scout reports of the Troft activity in and around Azras, Lorne considered their silence to be ominous in the extreme.

  Still, maybe Zoshak was right. Maybe the two Djinn had made it to Azras and were able to touch base with the Shahni remnant on the Qasamans' fancy underground communications system.

  He hoped so, anyway. The idea of Qasaman rule dispersing to individual unit commanders sounded like the quick path to complete chaos. And Zoshak was right—even a freshly-minted Ifrit like Ghushtre was surely smart enough not to make critical decisions on things like Isis without some serious thought.

  So then why had he looked so angry when he came out of his meeting with Fadil?

  "Here they come."

  Lorne looked furtively behind him. In the distance he saw his mother come into view around a vendor's stall with Ghushtre and the rest of the Djinn striding along behind her. "I'd better go before he spots me," he told Zoshak, getting up from his chair. "Keep an extra close eye on the mine from now on, will you?"

  "I always take my duty seriously." Zoshak stood up, too. "In fact, I believe it's nearly time for me to do my prescribed check of the mine itself. I think perhaps I'll join your mother in escorting Ifrit Ghushtre and his men in to Isis."

  "Do that," Lorne said. "And watch him, Carsh Zoshak. Watch him closely. He's up to something. We need to find out what that something is."

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  When Harli had said that the group would be leaving Stronghold at first light, Jody had naturally assumed that he meant there would actually be light in the sky.

  He hadn't. She was still waiting for her alarm to go off when Kemp's pounding at her door jolted her awake. By the time she settled herself groggily onto the spooker saddle behind him there was still not a single hint of glow in the eastern sky that she could detect. Apparently, first light was something that related only to Cobra optical enhancements.

  Spooker travel, she'd learned the first time she experienced it, was simultaneously one of the fastest and yet one of the slowest methods of transportation ever invented. Fastest, because the sheer speed of the spike-covered grav-lift cycles chewed up the fifty kilometers to the wrecked freighter in less than an hour. Slowest, because the sheer terror of watching the Qasaman landscape shoot toward and past them at that speed stretched every millisecond of the ride into its own sizeable fraction of eternity.

  Only once during the trip did she find herself wondering how Rashida was taking it. After that, she focused her full attention on getting through it herself.

  By the time they reached the crash site t
here was enough of a glow in the eastern sky for her to see both the wrecked freighter and the long gouge through the forest it had created when it plowed its way to a stop. As was typical of Caelian, of course, while the demolished trees remained demolished, the rest of the undergrowth had already started retaking the scarred ground.

  And where there was Caelian undergrowth, she knew, there were also Caelian predators. It was just as well, she reflected as Kemp and Smitty let the spookers coast to a halt beside the entry ramp, that she hadn't insisted that she and Rashida come alone.

  "Well, there it is," Kemp said as he hopped off the spooker and offered a helping hand to Jody. "Not exactly in prime working condition."

  "Looks better than the wrecked warship back at Stronghold," Jody said, taking his hand for balance as she climbed out of the saddle. She didn't really need the help, but it seemed impolite to refuse the offer.

  "It also looks worse on the inside," Rashida warned as she took Jody's cue and accepted Smitty's help to the ground. "I don't think Ghofl Khatir locked the hatch when we left, so we should be able to get in easily enough."

  "Whoa, there—not so fast," Kemp said, putting out a hand as she started up the ramp. "You and Jody are staying out here while I check for predators. Smitty, keep an eye on them."

  * * *

  They'd been waiting for over twenty minutes, and Smitty had killed two giggers and a screech tiger, when the freighter's hatch finally opened again. "Clear," Kemp called. "Sorry it took so long. On the plus side, it looks like we aren't going to have to go hunt for lunch."

  "Gigger?" Jody hazarded as she and the others headed up the ramp.

  "Hooded cloven, actually," Kemp said. "A small one—I'm still not sure how he managed to get in. Plus ribbon vine salad on the side, of course. Afraid the blue treacle's a bit overdone—I had to burn it off to get the command room door open."

  "It all sounds delicious," Jody murmured. "I can hardly wait."