Cobra Gamble

by Timothy Zahn

  "Sounds good," Kemp said. "Though of course you realize that with their numerical advantage we could take out the first four waves and still end up on the short end."

  "Yes, I used to get medals in simple math," Harli said dryly. "Not to mention that even if by some miracle we were able to clean out this one there's another whole ship over at the Octagon Caves. Unless Smitty pulls off his own class-A miracle, we'll eventually have that bunch to deal with, too."

  "Maybe," Kemp said. "But don't sell Smitty short. Between him, Jody, Rashida, and the caves, he could pull it off."

  "Here they come," Popescu reported. "Making a long circle back over Stronghold. Maybe they bought your bluff about being able to shoot them down."

  "We'll find out soon enough," Harli said, mentally running through the traps and blocks he'd put around the dorsal hatch. That was the only way in that didn't involve coming in under the downed warship's weapons.

  Of course, that entrance was also seven meters above the ground, with all the tricky aircar or ladder logistics.

  Unless the newcomer put his ship right up against the downed ship's upper side and rigged some kind of ramp from somewhere to the dorsal hatch. Harli hadn't thought about that possibility.

  But that would require the ship to land inside Stronghold, and there wasn't a lot of room to spare inside the wall. They would probably have to level a few buildings first, which would give the Cobras plenty of time to shift more of their defenses to that end of their refuge.

  "Whoa—there they are," Popescu said suddenly. "Coming across straight overhead."

  And without warning the ship suddenly bucked like a stung horse, sending equipment flying as a muffled double explosion rocked the room.

  Harli grabbed for the console beside him, shaking his head sharply against the ringing sensation echoing through his ears. He swallowed once, swallowed again—

  "—completely gone," Popescu's distant voice faded in through the aftershock. "Say again: both wings are blown to hell."

  A hand grabbed at Harli's arm, and he looked down to see Kemp struggling to his feet, a trickle of blood running down the side of his head. Beside him, a circuit multitester with a freshly cracked display and torn wire connecters had a spot of the same bright red on one corner. "You okay?" Harli called as he helped Kemp back to his feet.

  "Sure—fine," Kemp called back, wincing as he wiped away the blood. "I guess you can fire on another Troft ship."

  "Yeah, but you probably need a special passkey to do it," Harli said. There was another, smaller thud, a vibration mostly felt through the bulkhead they were standing on. "Sounds like he's down," he said. "Any idea where he landed?"

  "Nope—the cameras went when he blew up the wings," Popescu said. "You want me to call down to Whistler and have him send someone outside to look?"

  "No, don't bother," Harli told him. "It doesn't really matter—"

  He broke off, a sudden surge of adrenaline flooding into him.

  He was wrong. It did matter where the invaders had put down. It mattered a hell of a lot. "Kemp, take command," he said, heading for the horizontal door. "Make sure Whistler's ready to receive company."

  "Where are you going?" Kemp called after him as Harli grabbed the door jamb and pulled himself through.

  "Out," Harli called back through the door. "Back in five."

  The traps he'd set up at the dorsal hatch were simple ones, and it took him only a minute to deactivate them. For a moment he held his ear against the hatch itself, his audios at full power as he listened for any sound of activity.

  Nothing. Unfastening the hatch, he pushed it open, and eased his head through the opening.

  The broken and battle-scarred city lay stretched out before him in the afternoon sun. Fortunately, the scene wasn't further blighted by the presence of armed Trofts, either on the ground or patrolling the sky. Getting a grip on the upper edge of the hatchway, he ducked through the opening, standing precariously on the lower edge. Above him, the starboard side of the hull crest rose another seven meters into the sky, tall enough to block his view of the newly arrived ship.

  He focused on the hull. It was fairly smooth, certainly comfortable enough to walk on in the ship's usual upright position, but hardly designed for climbing. But at the very top of his view was a monstrous tangle of broken and twisted metal where the aft weapons wing had been before the incoming Trofts blew it to shrapnel. If he could jump up there and get a handhold on one of those pieces, he should be able to see exactly where the other ship had put down.

  Assuming, of course, that he didn't slice his fingers off on the torn metal. But it was the only way. Putting a targeting lock on the sturdiest-looking ribbon to give his nanocomputer the range, he carefully bent his knees—

  "So when you said out," Kemp's voice came from the direction of his shins, "you really meant it."

  Harli jerked, nearly losing his grip, and peered into the hatchway. Kemp was standing there, looking out at him. "What the hell are you doing here?" he demanded. "I gave you an order."

  "I wrote myself a medical excuse," Kemp said, pointing at the blood still trickling down his head. "Popescu and I thought someone should see what you were up to and find out if you needed a hand."

  "I had an idea, that's all," Harli said, gesturing up the side of the hull crest. "It suddenly occurred to me that Eubujak probably told the other Troft captain that we'd been setting up booby-traps."

  "Which we hadn't gotten around to yet."

  "Which Eubujak doesn't know," Harli reminded him. "More importantly, he doesn't know whether these supposed traps are in the ship, in Stronghold, or out in Wonderland. Given all that uncertainty, where's the absolute safest spot for a clever and cautious captain to land his ship?"

  Kemp shook his head. "No idea."

  "Come on, it's obvious," Harli said, hoping desperately that it really was obvious, that his mind wasn't playing some macabre trick on him. "The one place where he can actually see the ground, and not a waving field of hookgrass that could be hiding a collection of pressure mines—"

  "Is right where the other ship was before Rashida flew off with it," Kemp interrupted, his eyes going wide. "You're right. Hell in a handbasket. You got confirmation?"

  "I'm about to," Harli told him, stepping out of the opening and up onto the edge of the hatch. "As long as you're here anyway, make yourself useful. Lean out here and catch me if I don't stick the landing on my way back."

  He looked up at the broken metal, took a deep breath, and jumped.

  Survival on Caelian, his Cobra instructors had often told him, was less a matter of courage or brute strength than it was a matter of timing and precision. Over the years Harli had taken that advice to heart, and he reached the top of his leap with his outstretched hands precisely at the torn metal ribbon he'd been aiming for. He hooked his fingers gingerly around it and held on as he let his residual momentum and swaying dampen out. Then, slowly and carefully, he pulled himself up until he could see the top of the alien ship.

  And for the first time in days, he smiled.

  Kemp was holding the hatch steady as Harli slid back down the hull crest and landed on its edge. "Well?" he asked, holding his other hand where Harli could grab it for balance if necessary.

  "He is indeed clever and cautious," Harli confirmed. "I think we're in."

  "Terrific," Kemp said. "Assuming it's still set up."

  "It is." Harli turned and looked at the work station a hundred meters away beside the broken wall, a sobering thought suddenly occurring to him. "Of course, we will be visible to the other ship's wing cameras over there."

  "You're right," Kemp muttered. "Ouch. Any thoughts?"

  Harli looked down at the hatch cover he was balancing on. Too small to be a useful shield, even if they could get it off quickly enough. There were other, heftier slabs of metal inside the ship, but it would take equal amounts of time to get them free and most wouldn't pass through the hatch opening anyway.

  He shifted his focus to the gro
und below them. The matted hookgrass was a good sixty centimeters tall and completely filled the space between them and the work station. It could theoretically be crawled through if they didn't mind running into a few unpleasant animals and insect nests along the way.

  Unfortunately, sixty centimeters wasn't nearly tall enough to hide them, especially from cameras that would be looking more or less straight down.

  On the other hand, it wasn't just hookgrass down there. "You've been tramping back and forth through that stuff more than I have," he said, keying in his telescopies for a closer look at the tangled plants. "How much blue lettros did you spot mixed in?"

  "Enough," Kemp said thoughtfully "It'll be risky, though. The stuff burns like hell once you get it going, and the razor fern is even worse. It's also growing right through where the wall used to be, which means there's a fair chance we could burn down the whole town."

  "Noted," Harli said. "But it's still our best shot. You'd better get back and warn Popescu and the others."

  "Popescu and the others will figure it out for themselves," Kemp said firmly, swiveling around to dangle his legs out the hatchway. "Ready?"

  "Ready," Harli said. "You take north; I'll take south."

  Their antiarmor lasers flashed in unison, blazing across the landscape as they traced out patterns through the mix of grasses below. Harli keyed in his infrareds, spotted the hot spots he'd created, and sent another blast into each of those areas. A few seconds later the smoldering blue lettros popped out small yellow flames that began to grow and spread. He shifted his attention to the edges of the fires, located the telltale trail of sub-flashpoint ribbon vine and fired another laser blast into it. More flames popped up, and tendrils of oily black smoke began to rise into the air. Harli kept firing, nurturing the growing flames, watching out of the corner of his eye as Kemp similarly worked his end of the field.

  And then, all at once, the whole expanse ignited, the flames leaping up almost instantly obscured by the billowing clouds of smoke.

  Harli set his teeth, wincing as the first blast of hot air blew up across his face. This was not going to be fun. "Last chance to go warn Popescu," he shouted to Kemp.

  "We're wasting time," Kemp shouted back. "Last one to the work station's a cooked egg."

  Lurching forward, he dropped off the edge of the hatchway and disappeared into the smoke and flame. Taking a final deep breath, squeezing his eyes shut and keying in his opticals, Harli jumped after him.

  He hit the ground hard, the landing sending up a double splash of bright sparks and flaming vegetation as he bent his knees to absorb the impact. The smoke and flames were all around him now, tingling his nostrils and washing waves of heat against his clothes and skin. Through the blaze of infrared he could just barely see Kemp already charging through the inferno.

  Belatedly, it occurred to him that if the fire made it to the work station before he or Kemp did, this whole thing would be for nothing. Clenching his teeth against the heat and rapidly increasing pain, he set off at a dead run.

  He didn't remember much of the trip afterward. The only thing he was ever able to fully recall was the terrible agony as the fire burned across his skin and hair, the acrid smell of the smoke eating away at his throat and lungs, and the quietly horrifying fear that his eyes would be destroyed despite the forearms he had pressed across his face. His feet pounded against the ground, his servos pushing him along faster than his own muscles could ever manage, the cooling wind that would have normally accompanied such a race turned by the fire into a furnace blast. He struggled on, knowing it was their only chance, knowing that Kemp wasn't going to give up and that he damn well wasn't going to either—

  And then, suddenly, he was in clear, cool air again. Five meters ahead, he saw Kemp stumble and collapse to his knees beside the work station, small flames still burning on the half-melted silliweave fabric on his shoulders and upper thighs. Harli staggered toward him, blinking his eyes open, wincing at the new wave of pain that effort cost him.

  According to his nanocomputer, the entire run had lasted just seven point two seconds.

  "Kemp?" he croaked. Two meters past the station was an empty food table with a half-full hundred-liter jug of water in a dispenser beside it. Limping past Kemp, he headed toward it.

  "Got it," Kemp croaked back. "System coming up—activating—God, don't let the power and control cables have been burned through—"

  "Step back," Harli ordered, pulling the jug from the dispenser and sloshing a little of the water out onto the ground as he turned it upright. "Come on, step back."

  "It's done," Kemp said, breathing shallowly as he pulled himself to his feet and staggered back from the control board. "But if it doesn't work—"

  "It'll work," Harli said, directing splashes of water onto the remaining flames and then, for good measure, pouring some over Kemp's head. "Trust me. It'll work."

  The words were barely out of his mouth when, through the roar of the fire, he heard the creaking of moving metal.

  He looked over at the downed ship. Through the billowing smoke he could see that it was on the move, rising ponderously up from the ground as the grav lifts the Troft prisoners had moved to the sides and broken lower wings ran to full power. The ship continued to rise, moving faster now as it approached the top of its arc. It reached it, and for a brief moment it stood proudly upright again for the first time since Harli and the other Cobras had knocked it over.

  But it didn't stay vertical for more than that brief second. The grav lifts were still pushing, the wrecked cascade regulator was no longer there to ease back their power, and the huge mass of metal had built up way too much momentum. The ship kept moving and toppled over in the other direction, slamming into the newly-arrived ship with an ear-splitting grinding of metal against metal.

  For a moment the two ships seemed to pause, teetering and shaking. Then, with an even louder shriek of grinding metal, they fell over together in a violent crash that shook the ground so hard it nearly knocked Harli off his feet.

  For a long moment the only sound was the crackling roar of the frames. Finally, Kemp stirred. "Popescu," he said in a hoarse voice, "is going to be furious."

  Harli drew a careful breath into his aching lungs. "I said you should go back and warn him."

  "He'll get over it." Taking the jug from Harli's blackened hands, he sprayed some of the water onto a smoldering fire on Harli's shoulder that he hadn't even noticed was there. "But we should probably let him know that the Trofts probably won't be up for a fight anytime soon," he added. "Might be a good time for him to call on the captain to surrender."

  "Sorry, I didn't think to grab a radio," Harli apologized. He waved wearily at the fire. "And I don't think I'm up to delivering the message in person."

  "Me, neither," Kemp conceded. "Well, if Popescu wants us, he'll find us."

  "Sure," Harli said. "Come on, let's see if they left any burn salve or painkillers in the hospital when they moved everyone out."

  "Sounds like a plan." Kemp peered at his blistered hands. "You really think the Qasamans were able to grow Paul Broom's leg back?"

  "They said they could" Harli said. "Don't know how they'll do with burns, but it's worth checking out. When this is over, we'll talk to Rashida about setting us up."

  "Assuming she survives," Kemp said quietly.

  Harli winced. "Yes," he said. "Assuming she survives."

  * * *

  Jody's original concern had been that the Trofts would come charging into the caves the minute their ship landed, catching her and the others out in the open. But the captain's decision to first burn away any nearby ambush positions had given their prey the time they needed to cross the chamber and get to Smitty's chosen rock chimney.

  Getting there, unfortunately, turned out to be only half the battle. Smitty was an expert at that kind of climbing, and Rashida had the method down after her first try. But for some reason it took Jody a dozen attempts and ten minutes of intensive coaching before she finally figu
red out the necessary technique: back and feet braced on opposite sides of the chimney, hands pushing down to move her back upward, feet simultaneously walking up the other side. She still felt a lot more awkward than either of the others looked, but at least she was able to do it.

  And with that, they finally started up.

  Smitty, who knew the route and the tricky parts of the chimney, took the lead. Jody came next, a meter behind him, still struggling. Rashida, moving much more gracefully, brought up the rear. Smitty hadn't been able to find any rope aboard the ship during their race to the caves, but Rashida had used Jody's prolonged tutoring time to carefully tear the silliweave bag into strips and then braid them the sturdy-looking lines that now tied the three climbers to each other.

  Though sturdy-looking, Jody knew, didn't necessarily mean sturdy. As they worked their way up the rock tube she found herself staring at the rope hanging loosely between her belt and Smitty's, wondering how much weight the thing could actually take. Hoping fervently that they never had to find out.

  They were nearly to the top of the chimney, and Jody could see the glow of diffuse sunlight seeping between Smitty's torso and arms, when she heard the clink of metal on rock beneath her.

  She froze, wondering fleetingly if she dared speak up to warn Smitty and Rashida. Fortunately, they'd apparently also heard the noise, and stopped as quickly as she had.

  For a moment there was nothing more. Jody peered down over her shoulder, trying to see past Rashida to the bottom. But all she could see was the dark rock of the chimney and the even darker rock far below.

  But other sounds were now starting to drift up: the sound of feet shuffling across pebble-strewn rock, an occasional distant and muffled Troft voice, a few more random clinks and thuds. Jody strained her ears, trying to figure out if all of it was getting closer to them, but the natural echo of the huge chamber thwarted her efforts.

  And then, without warning, a Troft stepped into view beneath them.

  Jody held her breath. He seemed to be looking around, his helmet and laser turning slowly as he surveyed the area.