Cobra Slave Read online

  “Of course,” Lorne said, feeling his face flush with belated annoyance at himself. He would probably hear about this later from his parents and Uncle Corwin. “I believe we were in the middle of the battle of Azras.”

  “Let’s go back a bit to your trip from Caelian to Qasama,” Santores said, twitching his left eyelid once. From what Lorne had been able to glean from bits of conversation, that was how Dominion people accessed their communications and data search systems. “You said you traveled aboard a ship of the Tlos’khin’fahi demesne?”

  “That’s correct,” Lorne said, frowning. Yesterday’s testimony had progressed far beyond that particular point. Why in the Worlds was Santores going all the way back to Caelian now? “The Tlossie second heir, Ingidi-inhiliziyo, took us aboard his ship at Caelian—”

  “You and the Isis equipment,” Reivaro put in.

  “Yes,” Lorne said, suppressing a sigh. Inevitably, it seemed, the conversation somehow always came back to Isis. The Integrated Structural Implantation System that Dr. Glas Croi and the Troft demesne-heir Ingidi-inhiliziyo had created—the automated surgical machinery that the Aventine press had unimaginatively labeled the Cobra Factory—had become a virtual obsession with Reivaro.

  And it didn’t take a genius to see that dragging up Isis every chance he got didn’t bode well for the treason charges looming over the whole Broom family. Nissa Gendreves was pushing hard to turn her formal charges into a formal trial, and though Chintawa had so far been able to sidetrack her with procedural tricks, those delaying tactics had to be close to bottoming out. Santores had made it clear that if the Cobra Worlds weren’t prepared to deal with the charges quickly and efficiently, the commodore himself was.

  On the other hand…

  Lorne stole a quick look at the man to Santores’s left. Sitting straight and tall, his face composed and unreadable, was Captain Barrington Moreau, commander of the Dorian and decorated member of the Dominion Fleet.

  And, perhaps more significantly, Lorne’s mother Jin’s second cousin.

  Why was he here? That was the question the family had been pondering ever since their first polite but somewhat strained meeting with Barrington a few days ago. Their conversation had been hurried, sandwiched between the parade of official testimonies, and they hadn’t gotten very far past the pleasantries and what Lorne’s father Paul called reception-room chatter. To Lorne, the formal tone of the meeting had made it feel almost like an afterthought, as if Barrington had been idly reading up on family history during the long voyage and suddenly discovered he was related to some of the original Cobra Worlds’ colonists.

  Which was absurd, of course. According to Santores, the three warships had taken eight months to circle around the Troft and Minthisti-controlled sections of space on their voyage here. The Dominion Military Command would hardly have plucked Barrington and his ship from whatever duty they’d been on and sent them along just on some random whim.

  Unless it hadn’t been the military’s idea at all.

  Lorne’s great-grandfather Jonny Moreau had died relatively young, suffering from anemia, arthritis, and all the rest of the physical ailments that still plagued the men who volunteered their lives to become Cobras. It was a foreshortened future Lorne himself was facing, and one he tried very hard not to think about. But Jonny’s brother Jame had been a few years younger than he was, and hadn’t carried the handicap of Cobra gear inside his body. Moreover, at the time the Dominion and Cobra Worlds lost contact, Jame had been on the fast track to becoming a member of the Dominion’s Central Committee.

  Could Jame Moreau still be alive? He would be somewhere around a hundred and twenty by now, a decade or two beyond the best lifespan anyone on the Cobra Worlds had yet been able to manage. But Lorne had no idea what the current state of Dominion medicine was; and whatever that state was, Dominion Committés would certainly have the benefits of the very best of it.

  And if Jame was alive, could he still be in power? Or at least have the ear of the people in power?

  Could it have been Jame Moreau himself who’d pulled strings so that his grandson Barrington could come and see what had become of this branch of his family?

  “While you were aboard the Tlos’khin’fahi ship,” Santores continued, “did you ever have occasion to enter the command or navigational areas?”

  Lorne snapped his attention back from his musings. The command area? What kind of question was that? “I was on the bridge a couple of times, yes,” he said.

  “Were you close enough to get a look at any of the navigational readouts?”

  “I don’t know,” Lorne said.

  “It’s a simple question,” Reivaro put in impatiently. “Did you get close enough to the navigational displays to read them, or didn’t you?”

  “And I said I don’t know,” Lorne repeated. “Even if I was, I certainly wasn’t paying any attention to them.”

  “Because you were focusing on how to get Isis down and into Qasaman hands?”

  “Because we were focusing on how to win the damn war,” Lorne shot back.

  “Which you did,” Santores said, inclining his head slightly. “And our sincerest congratulations on that.”

  He twitched his eyelid again. “As you said a moment ago, yesterday’s session ended with your attack on the Troft warship outside Azras. Let’s go ahead and pick it up from there.”

  #

  Captain Joshti Lij Tulu of the Algonquin muttered a curse. “Unbelievable,” he said, twitching his eyelid to close off the data stream. “One world, against a combined invasion force of at least three Troft demesnes?”

  “And without any modern weapons,” Barrington added.

  “No, I literally mean unbelievable,” Lij Tulu growled. “Broom is lying. There has to be more to this.”

  “Like what?” Barrington asked.

  “Like maybe the Qasamans had a lot more help than Broom says they did,” Lij Tulu said. “These three demesnes—the Tlos’khin’fahi, Hoibe’ryi’sarai and—what’s the other one?—the Chrii’pra’pfwoi. Maybe they’re the ones who intervened and kicked the invaders off the planet.”

  “Why would he lie?” Barrington asked.

  “Please,” Lij Tulu said scornfully. “Can’t you hear it in his voice? He’s madly in love with these Qasamans—the whole damn Broom family is. He’d say anything—he’d believe anything—that made them look superhuman.”

  “If they’re so superhuman, why did they need the Isis equipment?” Barrington countered.

  At the head of the table, Santores stirred. “It doesn’t matter how they threw the invaders off Qasama,” he said quietly. “Whether they did it themselves or had strong enough ties with the Tlos’khin’fahi and others to get them to do it for them, the point remains that they did drive the invaders away. And not just from Qasama, either, but apparently from the Cobra Worlds, as well.”

  “With a lot of help from Caelian, if Nissa Gendreves’s testimony is to be believed,” Barrington reminded him.

  “Yes,” Santores murmured. “I’m thinking that we’ve found exactly what we’re looking for.” His lips compressed. “Except that we haven’t really found it, have we?”

  For a moment the room was silent. “We could, though,” Lij Tulu said.

  Barrington twitched up the data stream and ran it down the transcript of Lorne Broom’s testimony, feeling a swirl of conflict churning through his stomach. It was necessary, he knew.

  But necessary or not, the boy was kin, his second cousin once removed. What Lij Tulu was suggesting… “What if we tried the parents again?” he suggested. “They were all in the Troft control room together, and they may be able to see the big picture better than their son.”

  “Are you serious?” Lij Tulu scoffed. “Paul Broom owes the Qasamans his leg. Jasmine Broom owes them her life. I’d rank those beside hero worship any day of the month.” He looked back at Santores. “Commodore, we’ve asked for cooperation. We haven’t gotten it. In my opinion, it’s time to bring in the
MindsEye.”

  “Your intent being to use it on the Brooms?” Barrington shook his head. “My patron would strongly oppose any such suggestion.”

  “Your patron’s not here,” Lij Tulu countered tartly. “And we have a job to do.” He raised his eyebrows. “Commodore?”

  “I agree the MindsEye is our best hope at this point,” Santores said. “But there’s a problem. I’d hoped Colonel Reivaro’s public focus on the Isis project would pressure Chintawa to back down to the point where we could take custody of the Brooms. Unfortunately, it’s also motivated Nissa Gendreves to push that much harder to have the family tried by the Cobra Worlds government. It looks to me like that Chintawa is starting to lean that direction, and once any such trial begins the family will be off-limits to us.”

  “Why do we care what Chintawa and Gendreves want or don’t want?” Lij Tulu growled. “We’re the Dominion of Man. If we want the Brooms, why can’t we just take them?”

  “Because we also want to maintain good relations with the local leadership,” Santores said firmly. “Until we know everything about this place, including how the various Troft demesnes fit into the picture, we need their cooperation.”

  “But the Brooms are charged with treason,” Lij Tulu said. “The locals have to grant authority to us, don’t they?”

  “In theory, yes,” Santores said. “But there are two problems. I’ve looked through the statutes, including the original Cobra Worlds charter. It appears there’s no provision for an accredited Dominion force to assume power.”

  Lij Tulu stared. “That’s insane,” he said. “That provision’s always in planetary charters.”

  “It is now; it apparently wasn’t back then,” Santores said. “Don’t forget, the whole purpose behind the Cobra Worlds was to have a place where Dome could get rid of the Cobra war veterans before their presence became a danger to the Dominion as a whole. I can see some short-sighted Committé rationalizing that no one was ever going to come out here again and therefore not bothering to add it to their charter.”

  “Then simply tell them charges of treason supersede their charter.”

  “I would,” Santores agreed. “Except for one small problem. I asked Captain Moreau to look into it, and it appears that by Dominion law what the Brooms have done isn’t treason.”

  Lij Tulu turned to Barrington. “You’re joking.”

  “Isis is Cobra, and Cobra is hundred-year-old technology,” Barrington pointed out. “They might as well have given the Qasamans the secret to making iron cannon.”

  “But—” Lij Tulu sputtered. “All right, fine. Maybe we can’t grab Lorne Broom and lock him up aboard the Algonquin for a week. But what about six hours? Can I have him for six hours?”

  Barrington felt his stomach tighten. There it was: the end game he’d known Lij Tulu would eventually get to. “You’re not serious,” he said.

  “Why not?” Lij Tulu shot back. “I can have MindsEye disassembled and brought down here by twenty-two-hundred tonight. We make sure Lorne sticks around overnight, maybe tell him we need another round of hearings tomorrow. If we work through the night we can have everything reassembled and recalibrated by oh-six-hundred. We take him from his quarters, plug him in, and see what we get.”

  “What we’ll probably get is a dead Cobra and a furious local government,” Barrington said darkly. “Commodore, you can’t seriously consider such an action.”

  “Because your patron wouldn’t approve?” Lij Tulu countered.

  “Because it isn’t necessary,” Barrington said. “Not yet. We’re not ready to move yet anyway. There’s time to explore other avenues.”

  “Such as?” Lij Tulu demanded. “Don’t misunderstand, Captain, I’m all for doing this the easy way if possible. But you can count on one hand the number of people on Aventine who’ve ever been to Qasama, or have traveled to Qazadi aboard a Troft ship. They’re all the same fingers, and they’re all in the Broom family.”

  “Maybe there’s something we haven’t thought of,” Barrington persisted. “Regardless, it wouldn’t hurt to wait a little longer before doing something that drastic.”

  “In theory, I agree,” Santores said. “But if and when Gendreves is able to force Chintawa into putting the Brooms on trial, we’ll lose even short-term access. The family will be put into detention under Capitalia’s control, and we won’t be able to borrow one of them even for six hours.”

  “We will once the trial’s over,” Barrington persisted.

  “Only if they’re acquitted,” Lij Tulu countered. “Even if they are, a trial could take months. We can’t afford to wait that long.”

  For another moment the room was silent. Barrington forced himself to take deep, slow breaths, thinking furiously. The thought of bringing his patron a report of the deliberate destruction of one of the Moreau family…

  But Lij Tulu was right. Santores wanted Qasama, and the only people who might be able to get him there were the Brooms.

  And Barrington was sworn to obey his commander’s orders, and the laws and statutes of the Dominion of Man. He could try to talk Santores into a different course of action. But if that failed there was nothing else he could do.

  “You say you can have MindsEye ready by morning?” Santores asked.

  “Yes, sir,” Lij Tulu confirmed. “Provided I give the order within the next hour.”

  “Then do so,” Santores said.

  “My patron would object strenuously,” Barrington said, trying one last time.

  “Were he here,” Lij Tulu said pointedly.

  “Were he here,” Barrington conceded. “In his absence, I wish to go on record as protesting this course of action.”

  “So noted,” Santores said. “I presume, Captain, you’ll want to start with Lorne?”

  “Yes, sir,” Lij Tulu said. “As I said earlier, his parents in deeper emotional debt to the Qasamans and will therefore have more resistance.” He looked at Barrington. “And of course, his younger age will give him a better chance of surviving the procedure.”

  “We know where he is?” Santores asked.

  “At his great uncle Corwin Moreau’s house, that little estate thing they call the Island,” Lij Tulu said. “Colonel Reivaro has a car watching him. Shall I have them go in and bring him out?”

  “No,” Santores said. There was some reluctance behind his eyes, Barrington could see. But his voice was the rock-solidness of a man who’s made his decision. “No, we’ll let him have a final good meal with his family. Just have the car follow him back to the Dome—” He broke off, shaking his head. “I can’t believe they had the gall to actually name this place the Dome. As if it could ever actually compare. At any rate, have the colonel’s men follow him back here and make sure he settles in.”

  “He will,” Lij Tulu promised, his fingers twitching as he made notes into the Algonquin’s data stream. “He certainly has no reason not to. He’s not scheduled to head back to DeVegas until tomorrow.”

  “Good,” Santores said. “Once he’s settled back into his quarters, have the colonel inform him that we’ll want him at a closed session tomorrow at oh-six-hundred.”

  “Yes, sir,” Lij Tulu said, making a final note. “I’ll arrange for an escort to meet him then and walk him over.”

  “Good.” Santores looked at Barrington. “Hopefully, by this time tomorrow we’ll have Qasama’s location.”

  “Or else Lorne Broom will be dead,” Barrington said stiffly.

  Santores’s lip twitched. “Yes,” he said. “Or else he’ll be dead.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  “But the weirdest part,” Lorne said around a mouthful of roast sudeer, “was the out-of-the-sky question about the command area on Warrior’s ship.”

  “Don’t talk with your mouth full,” Jin’s Aunt Thena admonished him mildly.

  “Especially when you’re working on your aunt’s cuisine,” Uncle Corwin seconded from the head of the table. “Such works of art deserve your full attention.”

  “R
ight,” Lorne said. “Sorry.” He finished chewing the bite and swallowed. “It really is delicious, Aunt Thena.”

  A chorus of agreeing murmurs ran around the table. “Thank you,” Thena said, inclining her head.

  Jin blinked back sudden tears. Yes, the roast was good. But it wasn’t like the roasts her eldest son Merrick used to make.

  The son she’d left behind on Qasama.

  War meant casualties. It meant people dying. She’d known that from the start, from the minute she and Merrick had first seen the shock front of Troft warships skimming across the early-morning Qasaman sky.

  Some of those deaths had been quick. Others had been slower, more lingering, more painful. Many more Qasamans had been injured or maimed, some beyond even the ability of the Qasaman doctors to heal. Those victims would carry pain or disability to their graves. For some, their injuries meant those graves would arrive far sooner than they should.

  Jin had been prepared for those possibilities, at least as well as anyone ever could be. She’d also been prepared, though not nearly as well, for such a fate to befall herself or Merrick.

  What she hadn’t been prepared for was for her son to be taken prisoner by the Trofts, and then to simply disappear.

  And the true hell of it was that she had no idea of where he’d been taken. Or, indeed, why.

  Her husband Paul was speaking. With an effort, Jin forced her mind back to the conversation. “Yes, Santores threw me a similar question during my testimony,” he said. “In my case, he wanted to know what I knew about navigational systems on Cobra Worlds ships.”

  “What did you tell him?” Jody asked from across the table.

  Jin focused on her daughter. The question had been an innocent one, delivered in a mostly innocent way.

  But there had been something in Jody’s tone. And now, studying her face, Jin could see that there was something going on behind the young woman’s eyes, as well.

  “Everything I know, which isn’t much,” Paul said. “Typically, our nav displays show current location, previous location, and the route taken. I know the ship’s computer also stores the locations of all of the Cobra Worlds, plus the main Tlossie, Chriie, and Hoibie trading points. There’s also supposed to be a limited history of recent trips, but I told them I’d never seen one.”