Cobra Page 6

  "Thank you." Standing up, P'alit nodded to Mendro and followed the MP out.

  Catching the eye of Jonny's guard, Mendro gestured minutely, and the other joined the exodus. The door closed and Jonny and Mendro were alone.

  "Anything you'd like to say?" Mendro asked mildly.

  "Nothing that would do any good, sir," Jonny told him bitterly. All the work, all the sweat... and it was about to come crashing down on top of him. "I didn't do it, but I don't know any way to prove that."

  "Um." Mendro gave him a long, searching gaze and then shrugged. "Well... you'd better get back to the testing, I suppose, before you get any further behind schedule."

  "You're not dropping me from the unit, sir?" Jonny asked, a spark of hope struggling to pierce the rubble of his collapsed future.

  "Do you think this sort of misbehavior rates that?" Mendro countered.

  "I really don't know." Jonny shook his head. "I know we're needed for the war, but... on Horizon, at least, picking on someone weaker than you are is considered cowardly."

  "It's considered that way on Asgard, too." Mendro sighed. "It may very well come to expulsion, Moreau; at this point I don't know. But until that decision's made there's no point in depriving your team of your help in the group operations."

  In other words, they were going to give him the chance to risk his life-and possibly lose it-and then decide whether that risk had any real meaning or not.

  "Yes, sir," Jonny said, standing up. "I'll do my best."

  "I expect nothing less." Mendro touched a button and the MP reappeared.

  "Dismissed."

  It wasn't as hard as Jonny had expected to forget his new troubles as the testing continued. The defenses he faced were devilishly tight, and it took every milligram of his concentration to handle his assigned missions. But his luck and skill held out, and he completed the solitaire exercises with nothing more serious than skinned hands and an impressive collection of bruises.

  And then he joined his roommates for the group tests... and there the disasters began.

  Facing Viljo again-working and fighting alongside him-brought out thoughts and feelings that even their danger couldn't suppress... and that distraction quickly manifested itself in reduced competence. Twice Jonny got himself into situations that only his computerized reflexes were able to get him out of; more often than that a failure to do his part of the job wound up putting one of the others in unnecessary danger. Singh took a laser burn that had him operating under the sluggishness of heavy pain-killers, while only quick action by Jonny and Deutsch pulled Noffke out of a pincer trap that would almost certainly have left him dead.

  A hundred times during those two days Jonny considered having it out with Viljo, either verbally or physically; of letting the others know the kind of vermin they were working with and at least eliminating the lie he was being forced to live. But each time the opportunity arose he choked his anger back down and said nothing. They were all just barely surviving with one of their number under an emotional handicap; to multiply that burden and spread it around would be not only unfair but likely lethal as well.

  The other logical alternative occurred to him only once, and for an hour afterward he actually regretted the fact that his ethical training forbade him to simply shoot Viljo in the back.

  The missions went on, oblivious to Jonny's internal turmoil. Together the six of them broke into a fortified ten-story building; penetrated and destroyed a twenty-man garrison; disabled the booby-traps around an underground bunker and blew up its entrance; and successfully rescued four remotes simulating civilian prisoners from a Troft jail. They camped overnight in a Troft-patrolled wasteland area, picked up the characteristics of an off-center group of civilians quickly enough and accurately enough to avoid being identified as strangers an hour afterwards, and led a group of Resistance remotes on a simple mission that succeeded despite the often dangerous errors the remotes' operators allowed their machines to make.

  They did it all, they did it well, and they lived through it... and as the transport flew them back toward Freyr, Jonny decided it had been worth the risk.

  Whatever discipline Mendro chose to administer, he knew now that he indeed had what it took to be a Cobra. Whether he was ever allowed to serve as one or not, that inner knowledge was something they could never take from him.

  When they reached Freyr and found the MP's waiting, he was almost glad. Whatever

  Mendro had decided, apparently it was going to be over quickly.

  And it was. What he wasn't expecting was that the commander would invite an audience to watch.

  "Cee-three Bai reports you did extremely well," Mendro commented, looking around at the six grimy trainees seated in a semicircle in front of his desk. "Given you're all alive and relatively unscathed, I would tend to agree. Any immediate reactions to the missions that spring to mind?"

  "Yes, sir," Deutsch spoke up after a moment of thoughtful silence. "We had some major problems leading that Resistance team-their mistakes were very hard to compensate for. Was that simulation realistic?"

  Mendro nodded. "Unfortunately, yes. Civilians are always going to make what are-to you-incredibly stupid mistakes. About all you can do is try and minimize that effect while maintaining an attitude of patience. Other comments? No? Then

  I suppose we'd better move on to the reason I called you here: the charges outstanding against Trainee Moreau."

  The abrupt change of subject sent a rustle of surprise through the group.

  "Charges, sir?" Deutsch asked carefully.

  "Yes. He's been accused of attacking a civilian during your unauthorized trip into town four nights ago." Mendro gave them a capsule summary of P'alit's story. "Moreau claims he didn't do it," he concluded. "Comments?"

  "I don't believe it, sir," Halloran said flatly. "I'm not calling this character a liar, but I think he must've misread the name."

  "Or else saw Jonny that night, got into a fight later, and is trying to stick the Army for his medical costs," Noffke suggested.

  "Perhaps," Mendro nodded. "But suppose for the moment it's true. Do you think I would be justified in that event in transferring Moreau out of the Cobras?"

  An uncomfortable silence descended on the room. Jonny watched the play of emotion across their faces, but while he clearly had their sympathy, it was also clear which way they were leaning. He hardly blamed them; in their places he knew which answer he would choose.

  It was Deutsch who eventually put the common thought into words. "I don't think you'd have any choice, sir. Misuse of our equipment would essentially pit us against the civilian population, certainly in their minds. Speaking as a citizen of Adirondack, we've already got all the opponents we need right now."

  Mendro nodded. "I'm glad you agree. Well. For the next couple of days you'll be off-duty again. After that we'll be running through a detailed analysis of your exam performance with each of you, showing you where and how your equipment could have been utilized more effectively." He paused... and something in his face abruptly broke through the deadness surrounding Jonny's mind. "That's one of the things we had to keep secret, to avoid excessive self-consciousness," the commander went on. "With the relatively large amount of space available in those neckwrap computers we were able to keep records of all your equipment usage."

  Almost lazily, he shifted his gaze. "That alley behind the Thasser Eya Bar was dark, Trainee Viljo. You had to use your vision enhancers while you fought that civilian."

  The color drained from Viljo's face. His mouth opened... but then his eyes flicked around the group, and whatever protest or excuse he was preparing died unsaid.

  "If you have an explanation, I'll hear it now," Mendro added.

  "No explanation, sir," Viljo said through stiff lips.

  Mendro nodded. "Halloran, Noffke, Singh, Deutsch: you'll escort your former teammate to the surgical wing; they already have their instructions. Dismissed."

  Slowly, Viljo stood up. He looked once at Jonny with empty eyes
, then walked to the door with the remnants of his dignity wrapped almost visibly around him. The others, their own expressions cast in iron, followed.

  The brittle silence in the room remained for several seconds after the door closed behind them. "You knew all along I didn't do it," Jonny said at last.

  Mendro shrugged minutely. "Not conclusively, but we were ninety percent sure.

  The computer doesn't record a complete film every time the vision enhancers are used, you know. We had to correlate that usage with servo movements to know whether you'd done it or not-and until you identified Viljo as the probable culprit, we didn't know whose records we also needed to pull."

  "You still could've told me then that I wasn't really under suspicion."

  "I could've," Mendro acknowledged. "But it seemed like a good opportunity to get a little more data on your emotional makeup."

  "You wanted to see if I'd be too preoccupied to function in combat? Or whether

  I'd just slag Viljo and be done with it?"

  "And losing control either way would've had you out of the unit instantly,"

  Mendro said, his voice hardening. "And before you complain about being unfairly singled out, remember that we're preparing you for war here, not playing some game with fixed rules. We do what's necessary, and if some people bear a little more of the burden than others, well, that's just the way it goes. Life is like that, and you'd better get used to it." The commander grunted. "Sorry-didn't mean to lecture. I won't apologize for running you an extra turn around the squirrel cage, but having come through the test as well as you did I don't think you've got real grounds for complaint."

  "No, sir. But it wasn't just a single turn around the cage. Cee-three Bai's been holding me up for special notice ever since the training began-and if he hadn't done that Viljo might not have gotten irritated enough to try tarnishing my image like he did."

  "Which let us learn something important about him, didn't it?" Mendro countered coolly.

  "Yes, sir. But-"

  "Let me put it this way, then," Mendro interrupted. "In all of human history people from one part of a region, country, planet, or system have tended to look down on people from another. It's simple human nature. In today's Dominion of

  Man this manifests itself as a faintly condescending attitude toward the frontier planets. Worlds like Horizon, Rajput, even Zimbwe... and Adirondack.

  "It's a small thing and not at all important culturally, and it's therefore damned hard to test for its influence on a given trainee's personality. So without useful theory, we fall back on experiment: we raise someone from one of those worlds as the shining example of what a good Cobra should be and then watch to see who can't stand that. Viljo obviously couldn't. Neither, I'm sorry to say, could some of the others."

  "I see." A week ago, Jonny thought, he'd probably have been angry to learn he'd been used like that. But now... he had passed his test, and would be remaining a

  Cobra. They hadn't, and would be becoming... what? "What's going to happen to them? I remember you saying that some of our equipment wouldn't be removable.

  Will you have to...?"

  "Kill them?" Mendro smiled faintly, bitterly, and shook his head. "No. The equipment isn't removable, but at this stage it can be rendered essentially useless." There was something like pain in the other's eyes, Jonny noticed suddenly. How many times, he wondered, and for how many large or small reasons, had the commander had to tell one of his carefully chosen trainees that the suffering and sacrifice was all going to be for nothing? "The nanocomputer they'll be fitted with will be a pale imitation of the one you'll be receiving soon. It'll disconnect the power pack from all remaining weapons and put a moderate upper limit on servo power. To all intents and purposes they'll leave

  Asgard as nothing more than normal men with unbreakable bones."

  "And some bitter memories."

  Mendro gave him a long, steady look. "We all have those, Moreau. Memories are what ultimately spell the difference between a trainee and a soldier. When you've got memories of things that haven't worked-of things you could have done better, or differently, or not done at all-when you've got all that behind your eyes but can still do what has to be done... then you'll be a soldier."

  A week later Jonny, Halloran, Deutsch, Noffke, and Singh-now designated Cobra

  Team 2/03-left with the other newly-commissioned Cobras on a heavily protected skip-transport for the war zone. Penetrating the Troft battle perimeter, the teams were space-chuted into an eight-hundred-kilometer stretch of Adirondack's strategic Essek District.

  The landing was a disaster. Reacting far quicker than anyone had expected them to, the Troft ground forces intercepted Jonny's team right on the edge of the city Deutsch had been steering them toward. The Cobras were able to escape the encirclement with nothing more than minor flesh wounds... but in the blistering crossfire of that battle three civilians, caught in the wrong place at the wrong time, were killed. For days afterward their faces haunted Jonny's memories, and it was only as the team settled into their cover identities and began planning their first raid that he realized Mendro had been right.

  And he was well on his way to collecting a soldier's memories.

  Interlude

  Halfway around Asgard from Freyr Complex-removed both in distance and philosophical outlook from the centers of military strength-lay the sprawling city known simply as Dome. Periodic attempts had been made in the past two centuries to give it a more elegant name; but those efforts had been as doomed to failure as would have been a movement to rename Earth itself. The city-and the geodesic dome that dominated its skyline-were as fixed in the minds of

  Dominion citizens as were their own names... because it was from here that the

  Central Committee sent out the orders, laws, and verdicts that ultimately affected the lives of each one of those citizens. From here could be reversed the decisions of mayors, syndics, and even planetary governor-generals; and as all were equal under the law, so in theory could any citizen's complaint or petition be brought to the Committee's attention.

  In practice, of course, that was pure myth, and everyone who worked in the dome's shadow knew it. Small, relatively local matters were the province of the lower levels of government, and that was where they generally stayed. Seldom did any matter not directly affecting billions of people come to even a single

  Committ‚'s attention.

  But it did happen.

  Committ‚ Sarkiis H'orme's office was about average for one of the thirty most powerful men in the Dominion. Plush carpet, rare-wood paneling, a large desk inlaid with artifacts from dozens of worlds-a quiet sort of luxury, as such things went. Beyond the side doors lay his eight-room personal apartment and the miniature haiku garden where he often went to think and plan. Some Committ‚s used their dome apartments but rarely, preferring to leave their work behind in the evening and fly out to their larger country estates. H'orme was not one of those. Conscientious and hard-working by nature, he often worked late into the night... and at his age, the strain too often showed.

  It was showing now, Vanis D'arl thought, running a critical eye over H'orme as the Committ‚ skimmed through the report he'd prepared. Soon now-probably sooner than either had expected-H'orme would drive himself to an early death or retirement, and D'arl would take his place on the Committee. The ultimate success the Dominion had to offer; but one that carried a twinge of uneasiness along with it. D'arl had been with H'orme for nineteen years-the last eight as chief aide and chosen successor-and if he'd learned one thing in that time, it was that running the Dominion properly took infinite knowledge and infinite wisdom. The fact that no one else possessed those qualities either was irrelevant; the philosophy of excellence under which he'd been raised demanded he strive for the closest approximations possible. H'orme, also born and raised on Asgard, shared that background... and D'arl therefore knew how much work those goals entailed.

  Pushing the "page" button one last time, H'orme laid down his comboa
rd and raised his eyes to D'arl's. "Thirty percent. After all the preliminary testing thirty percent of the Cobra warrior trainees are still being deemed unfit. I presume you noticed the primary reason listed?"

  D'arl nodded. " 'Unsuitability for close work with civilian populations.' It's a catch-all category, I'm afraid, but I couldn't get the numbers broken down any further. I'm still trying."

  "You see what this implies, though, don't you? For the tests to have missed that badly, something must have changed between the prelims and the final cut; and what that means is that we're sending fully-activated Cobra warriors to Silvern and Adirondack without truly understanding their psychological state. On general principles alone that's poor policy."

  D'arl pursed his lips. "Well... it may just be a temporary feeling of power induced by their new abilities," he suggested. "A taste of warfare might make them realize that they're as fallible as any other mortals. Bring any conceit back down to normal."