Cobra Gamble Read online

  Many of the families on Qasama and Caelian had lost loved ones to the Troft invasion. It was probably inevitable, she knew, that sooner or later her family would be one of them.

  All she could do now was try her damnedest to make sure that Merrick's sacrifice—that all of their sacrifices—weren't wasted.

  "Did you talk to Fadil Sammon?" she asked, giving Paul's cheek one final caress and then lowering her hand back to her side.

  "Yes, and it's all set," he said. "The foreman has three crews below ground right now, clearing out the mining equipment and checking the ventilation, safety, and power systems. By the time we get Isis here, it should be ready for us to move right in."

  "Good." Jin took a deep breath, pushing the pain as far back as she could. It wasn't far, but it would hopefully be enough to allow her to function. "Let's see what progress the Djinn have made in organizing a vehicle caravan." She glanced around, spotted Siraj and Zoshak talking to the gate guards while a circle of villagers stood quietly around them. Ghofl Khatir, the third Djinni, was nowhere to be seen. "Do you know what happened to Djinn Khatir?" she asked.

  "He's talking to Fadil Sammon," Paul said. "Some high-level conference, I gather, from the way both of them looked when I left."

  Jin nodded. She'd wondered why Fadil hadn't been down here to meet her and the others as they arrived. "Is Fadil doing all right?" she asked.

  "Actually, no," Paul said, a fresh edge of grimness to his voice. "But we can talk about that later. Right now, we have to get Isis here and get Dr. Croi started putting the pieces together."

  "While we meanwhile dig up some recruits," Jin said. "I just hope we can find enough of them."

  "I don't think that's going to be a problem," Paul assured her. "From what little I've seen of Milika, I think Siraj Akim and the others should have plenty of volunteers to choose from."

  "Assuming he can find whatever qualities the Shahni consider necessary for good Qasaman warriors." Jin looked toward the east, where the sun would soon be coming up, and where the Troft invaders had long since settled in across the Qasaman landscape. "He'd just better find them fast," she added. "Even starting right now, it's ten days minimum before we can get any new Cobras into the field. That's ten more days the invaders will have to work on consolidating their positions and wrecking Qasama's infrastructure."

  "We'll make it," Paul said firmly. "Whatever we have to do, we'll make it."

  CHAPTER SIX

  The sound of hammering and power tools from the northern edge of the Caelian capital of Stronghold had begun right at sunup, jarring Jody Broom out of an already troubled sleep. By the time she finished her morning routine, including the tedious but vital job of scraping the spores and other floating organics off her silliweave clothing, the hammer-and-tongs were going full force.

  The door to the rented house's other bedroom was closed, which meant at least one of her two business partners, Geoff Boulton and Freylan Sanderby, was still trying to sleep through the racket. Probably Geoff, she made a private bet with herself. For all of his outgoing energy and easy social enthusiasm, he'd never been much of a morning person. Freylan, the shy introspective one of their research team, was much more likely to have risen at dawn, quietly eager to get back to work on the two combat suits the Qasaman Djinn had given them.

  Besides which, Freylan was a light sleeper. There was no way he was still zonked out in there.

  Jody had expected to find him outside on the house's small veranda, surrounded by the equipment Geoff had begged or borrowed, working on the puzzle of how exactly the electronics in the Djinni outfits were able to resist the floating organics that attached themselves to all non-living surfaces. But he was nowhere to be seen.

  Unfortunately, with the planetary communications system still down, there was no way for her to call him, or even to call someone else to ask about him. At this hour, she decided, her best bet would be to check in with the men at the wrecked wall and see if any of them had seen him. Readjusting the stiff silicon-based fabric across her shoulders, she headed toward the noise.

  Caelian's original settlers had quickly learned that the trouble with the floating organics wasn't the tiny spores per se. It was, rather, the tiny insects that eagerly descended on any and all bits of such entrenched vegetation, eating both the spores and bits of whatever carbon-based clothing or building material the spores happened to be attached to at the time. Tiny insects attracted larger insects, which attracted small birds and reptiles, all the way up the food chain to the larger predators that could take on human beings with impunity.

  There was nothing anyone had ever been able to do about the spores except try to keep them from finding something edible to attach to. The big predators, though, were another story. They could be shot and killed by projectile weapons and laser fire, which explained Caelian's relatively large contingent of Cobras and its heavily armed non-Cobra populace. Alternatively, the predators could be kept out of the settlements entirely, which explained the tall stainless-steel wall that had been erected around Stronghold.

  Only the wall wasn't very stainless anymore. In fact, for about seventy meters of its length along the northern part of the city, it wasn't even a wall. The Troft warship that had fallen sideways squarely on top of it had seen to that.

  Since it was the Troft invasion that had brought that warship into proximity to the wall in the first place, it was only fair that it should be the Troft prisoners who'd been tasked with the job of cleaning up the mess.

  They were doing a good job of it, Jody saw as she arrived at the downed warship. Or if not a good job, at least a busy and noisy one. The aliens were moving in and out of the wreckage, all two hundred of them, hammering at the ship's lower hull, lugging sections of grav-lift panels, or using pry bars and cutting torches on the weapons pods on the stubby wings. Standing watchful vigilance over the operation were twenty Cobras, some standing above the crowd on the intact sections of wall, others forming a barrier between the prisoners and the rest of the city.

  "You're up early."

  Jody turned. Harli Uy, Cobra commander and son of Caelian's governor, was walking briskly up behind her. "So are you," she said, eyeing the fatigue lines and blotches in his face. "Only I got a decent night's sleep."

  He grunted as he came to a halt beside her. "So did I," he said. "As decent a night's sleep as any of us gets these days, anyway."

  "That bad, huh?"

  "We're doing okay," Harli assured her. "We're just spread a little thin, that's all."

  "We knew that was going to happen," Jody reminded him. Now that he was closer, she could see the extra tension that was simmering beneath the tiredness. "How's your father?"

  Harli gave a microscopic hunch of his shoulders. "Recovering."

  "And?" Jody prompted.

  "And what?"

  "And what does he think about our agreement with the Qasamans?"

  "He's dealing with it." Harli waved at the working Trofts. "So you here for the circus, or the Biblical epic?" Jody frowned. "The what?"

  "The Biblical epic," Harli said. "Someone was saying yesterday the whole thing reminded him of Israelite slaves building pyramids back on Earth in some big screen epic."

  "Yes, I guess I can see that," Jody agreed, looking closely at Harli's face. "He doesn't like the agreement, does he?"

  Harli huffed out a sigh. "No, he's not very happy with it," he conceded. "Or with me." His lip twitched. "And to be honest, I'm starting to agree with him."

  "He's worried about the Qasamans having Isis?"

  "He's more annoyed that we don't have it." Harli gestured at two of the Cobras standing on the wall. "I mean, look at them. They're just standing there, doing absolutely nothing except ride herd on a bunch of prisoners. Meanwhile, Stronghold is running low on food, and the other towns are having to stay inside their own walls because they haven't got enough Cobras to escort anyone heading outside."

  And without the ability to send out hunting parties, Jody knew, those other towns
would also soon be running short of food. "Maybe we should lock them up in the ships," she suggested. "Or maybe just that one," she added, pointing to the second Troft warship, the one still standing upright beside the sideways one. "At least that would eliminate a lot of the guard duty."

  "Then who would do all the work to get the other ship out of there and start repairing the wall?" Harli countered. "Besides, there's no way to know what's still aboard that ship. They could have a hundred of those big hand lasers hidden behind the walls for all we know. Worse, they might find a way to wire around the power and control cables we cut and reactivate what's left of their wing-based weapons."

  Weapons that had devastated sections of Stronghold and killed or injured three hundred Cobras, including Jody's own father. Not to mention nearly getting her mother killed outright. "You're right," she acknowledged. "Sorry—I didn't think it through."

  "Don't worry about it," Harli said. "We've been working through all the options longer than you have, that's all. The idea actually surfaced almost a week ago, right after your parents and the rest of the crowd headed off for Qasama." He hesitated. "We also considered the idea of just dumping them out in the forest somewhere and letting Wonderland deal with them."

  Jody felt a shiver run through her. Wonderland—Caelian slang for everything on the planet not under direct human control. Out in the forest, without weapons or defenses, the aliens would be dead within days. Probably within hours. "You might as well just shoot them."

  "Which would be completely unethical," Harli agreed grimly. "I know. But ethics don't feed the bulldog, as my grandfather used to say. Doesn't get us any more Cobras, either."

  "If sending Isis to Qasama wins us the war, it'll be worth it," Jody reminded him.

  "If." Harli said. "And if it doesn't kill all of us first."

  For a minute they stood together in silence, watching the Trofts work. Most of the aliens she could see had their upper-arm membranes fully extended, the equivalent of heavy sweating for humans. Their overseers were working them hard, all right. Occasionally, Jody caught a flicker of light as one of the Cobras on guard duty fired his antiarmor laser, probably at some predator nosing around the work zone. "What did you mean, the circus?" she asked.

  Harli turned a frown onto her. "What?"

  "You asked me if I was here for the circus or the Biblical epic," she said. "What circus?"

  "Oh. Right." He gestured to her and started walking again toward the gap in the wall. "I just got the word—I was heading to see it myself. This way."

  They passed the line of sentries, maneuvered carefully over the crushed wall with its torn and twisted edges and past the equally hazardous wreckage of the downed warship. Some of the Trofts gave them baleful looks as they threaded their way through the work parties, but most of the prisoners ignored them entirely.

  And as they approached the last two parties, Jody finally saw what Harli had been referring to.

  Standing fifty meters off to the side, his gray combat suit in sharp contrast with the Cobras' muted white silliweave outfits, was Freylan.

  Jody rolled her eyes. Freylan knew better than this. Even with all those Cobras on hand to watch for trouble, he really should have known better than this.

  He was fighting with a section of support beam twice his size, trying to get it up onto his shoulder, when Jody and Harli reached him. "Freylan, what in the Worlds do you think you're doing?" Jody demanded.

  "Oh—hi, Jody," Freylan said, puffing with exertion as he got the beam up high enough to rest on his shoulder. "Hi, Harli. You two are up early."

  "All the best shows start early here," Harli said, craning his neck as he looked up at the end of the beam towering over them. "The lady asked you a question."

  "What?" Freylan frowned, then his face cleared. "Oh. You mean what am I doing?" He gestured to the beam. "I'm trying out the suit. Wanted to see how much strength the servos have, how the power curve plays out—you know. Try it out."

  "You couldn't have done this back at the house?" Jody asked.

  "Yeah, I suppose," Freylan said with a shrug. "But I figured as long as I was going to be lifting stuff, why not lift stuff that needed lifting anyway?"

  "Except that out here we have to protect you," Harli reminded him. "I don't suppose that occurred to you."

  "No, you don't," Freylan said brightly. "Organics don't stick to the suit, remember? And the giggers and screech tigers seem to be avoiding the area—"

  "I was thinking about them," Harli said patiently, nodding back toward the toiling Trofts.

  Freylan's eyes flicked over Harli's shoulder. "Oh," he said, sounding a little deflated. "You don't think they'd—? But there are Cobras all around them. They wouldn't try anything."

  "Who knows what they might try?" Jody said, trying to keep her tone gentle. It wasn't Freylan's fault that the universe and its inhabitants didn't always behave according to his idea of logic and rationality. "Harli's right. You need to move your experiments indoors."

  "Okay." Making a face, Freylan carefully eased the beam off his shoulder and lowered it back to the ground. "But you can see how strong these suits—"

  "Quiet," Harli snapped, twisting his head around toward the broken wall.

  Jody froze in place, her eyes darting back and forth as she searched for signs of trouble. But the Trofts were still working, the Cobra guards were still at their posts. There was nothing she could see that might have caught Harli's attention.

  And then, even as Harli hissed out a curse, she spotted one of the Cobras on the distant wall with his hands cupped around Chis mouth. Clearly, he was calling something that only Cobra enhanced hearing could pick up. She opened her mouth to ask Harli what the problem was—

  "Damn!' Harli spun halfway around, his head jerking back and forth as he looked around them. "Where's that woman gotten to? The Qasaman woman—Rashida Vil. Either of you see her? Quick!"

  Jody felt her breath catch in her throat. Rashida Vil had been the main pilot on the Qasaman team's trip to ask for the Cobra Worlds' help in fighting off the Troft invaders. Siraj Akim had decided that she should stay behind on Caelian, where her Troft language skills would be useful in helping the Caelians work with their prisoners.

  "I think she's in there," Freylan offered, pointing to the more intact of the two warships. "I saw her a few minutes ago with a couple of techs—"

  He was still in mid-sentence when Harli took off at a dead run toward the ship.

  "What is it?" Jody called after him. But there was no answer. "What were they doing?" she asked, grabbing Freylan's arm. "Could you tell? Who was she with?"

  "Just a couple of the city's techs," Freylan said, confusion and apprehension stuttering his words. "You don't think—because she's a pilot—?"

  "Stay here," Jody ordered him, and took off after Harli.

  Harli was long gone by the time Jody reached the ship. But one of the other Cobras, a man named Kemp, was on guard in the troop guard room just inside the door. "What's going on?" Jody panted as she charged in. "Where's Harli?"

  "Communications room," Kemp told her, his voice grim. "Deck one—top of the ship. Traffic Control's spotted a Troft ship on its way in."

  Jody felt her pounding heart try to seize up inside her. "One of these?" she asked, gesturing at the mass of the warship around them.

  "Harli doesn't think it's a warship," Kemp said. "Too small. More likely a courier here to check on the situation."

  Jody winced. A courier wouldn't be as bad as a full-fledged warship. But it would be bad enough. "We can't let it see what happened here."

  "No kidding," Kemp growled. "He's up there trying to see if that Vil woman can wave them off."

  Jody nodded. "I'll see if I can help."

  The warship had nine decks, which meant eight flights of narrow stairs between her and the comm room. Coming on top of that hundred-meter sprint, Jody's legs felt like rubber by the time she finally emerged from the stairway onto Deck One. Following the sound of voices, she stumbl
ed her way down the corridor to the comm room.

  There were three people already there. Rashida was seated at the main console, with Harli and another man standing stiffly behind her. Harli looked back as Jody came in, a warning finger at his lips.

  Jody nodded. Like she had extra breath to spare for questions right now anyway.

  [The proposed landing area, it is not on our schedule,] a Troft voice was coming from the speaker. [The primary attack site, it is elsewhere on the planet.]

  [The primary attack site, it is secure,] Rashida replied in fluent, flawless cattertalk. [The site, you may visit it afterward. But the scouting party, it is in danger. The soldiers, they must be first retrieved.]

  Frowning, Jody beckoned to Harli. He hesitated, then silently crossed to her. "What?" he whispered.

  "Kemp said you were going to try to wave them away," Jody whispered back. "But she's inviting them down?"

  Harli's eyes narrowed. "Is that what she's saying?"

  "You don't understand cattertalk?"

  "Not a word. What's she saying?"

  Jody focused on the conversation again. "It sounds like she's telling them there's a scouting party somewhere else on Caelian that needs to be picked up," she said. "She's insisting they do that before they swing by here."

  Some of the tension smoothed out of Harli's face. "No, okay, that's good," he said. "She convinced me there was no way they were just going to go home without a look, so I told her to try to stall them. A little side trip into Wonderland ought to do the trick."

  At the console, Rashida looked back at Jody, her face tense, her eyes desperate. "I hope you've got a Plan B," Jody warned. "Because it doesn't look like they're going for it."

  "Hell," Harli muttered, turning back to Rashida. She shifted her eyes to him and gave a small shake of her head.

  "Plan B?" Jody prompted.

  "Yeah, yeah, hold on a second," Harli said, his eyes darting around the room as if searching for inspiration. "Okay. If they insist on coming down, tell them fine, come ahead. Then shut down the comm."

  Rashida nodded and turned back to her board. [The primary attack site, you may come to it,] she said.