Cobra Slave

by Timothy Zahn

  But this wasn’t the time to argue fine points of history. He’d started toward the front of the crowd hoping to persuade them to stay calm long enough to give Jin enough time for her part of the plan. Whatever prestige the people were ready to give him toward that effort was more than welcome.

  By the time he reached the front the crowd had gone completely silent. Giving the line of Cobras a quick look, noting with some uneasiness how the range of their expressions ran from tense to hostile, he turned back to face the assembly.

  From this side, they did indeed look like a mob.

  “Good morning,” he called out. “My name is Paul Broom. Some of you may have heard of my modest contributions to the successful campaigns against the Trofts on Caelian and Qasama.” He gestured toward the building behind him. “We’ve got another invasion of sorts going on here today. An invasion, not by enemies, but by allies.”

  “Since when are they our allies?” someone in the crowd challenged.

  “Since we’re all part of humankind, and since we’ve recently learned the hard way that it’s a hostile universe out there,” Paul said calmly. “The Troft invasion showed that the only way we’re going to survive is for all of us to stick together.” He lifted a hand. “That being said, there are smart allies and there are idiot allies. At this point, I’d have to say that Colonel Reivaro and his men fall into the latter category.”

  A small chuckle ran through the crowd, and Paul felt some of the tension ease. “Let me tell you some of the things I learned fighting the Trofts,” he continued. “Some of those lessons might not be applicable here. But some of them might.”

  Once again, he gestured behind him. “Let’s start with the Cobras.”

  #

  The run, catch, and toss/jump maneuver had gone as smoothly and successfully as if Jin and Kalhandra did it every day. The vent he’d directed her to was as passable as he’d promised, and not nearly as filthy as she’d expected.

  Beneath the opening was a meter-wide, square-sided conduit. Her experience traversing a similar pathway in the Sollas hospital just after the Troft invasion stood her in good stead, and she worked her way down the shaft with a maximum of speed and a minimum of noise.

  The latter part being especially important, she discovered as she worked her way through the hoppers and cranes high above the factory’s main work floor. Aside from the hum of the ventilation system, the low rumble of a few machines on standby, and a few scattered pockets of muttered conversation, the place was as silent as a graveyard at midnight. She had no idea if the Dominion troops had audio enhancements built into their combat suits, but prudence dictated that she assume they did.

  Fortunately, the lack of other noise made the main group easy to locate. She found them gathered around a computer console set in the middle of one of the rooms and surrounded by a ring of large machines. There were seven in the party: Yates, Reivaro, two Marines, and three other uniformed men. Two of the latter were seated at the console, with the third man and Reivaro watching over their shoulders. Yates was a couple of meters away, with the two Marines standing close watch on either side of him.

  Nobody looked very happy. Reivaro, especially, seemed particularly irritated.

  “I tell you, that is the proper passcode,” Yates was saying with some serious annoyance of his own as Jin eased herself to a shadowed viewing position between a girder and one of the crane rails. “Like I told you before, some of the foremen add in their own codes for convenience. The only way you’re going to get through is for me to look up the list of everyone who oversees this division, get them all in here—”

  “We’re through, Colonel,” one of the men at the console announced.

  “You were saying?” Reivaro said.

  Yates swore feelingly, his eyes darting around the room with the restlessness of a trapped animal. He looked up, his eyes touching each machine and piece of equipment in turn, almost as if he was taking inventory of a treasured family business he might never see whole again.

  And as he did so, his gaze locked onto Jin.

  She winced, trying to get a finger up and to her lips before he could blurt out anything. But eyes had already moved on, continuing around the room as if he hadn’t even noticed there was someone perched up there above their heads. He eyed the two Marines, glared at the back of Reivaro’s head.

  And abruptly stepped to the console and picked up a notepad and stylus. Sending another glare at Reivaro, he started scribbling on the pad.

  “I trust you’re writing out the passcode for the next station?” Reivaro asked.

  “Hardly,” Yates growled. “It occurred to me that I might as well put this time to some constructive use.”

  “Poetry?” Reivaro hazarded. “Your memoirs?”

  “Your indictment,” Yates retorted. “You’re going to be on trial someday for this, Reivaro. Count on it. It would be good to have a contemporaneous document to add to the case against you.”

  “Very courageous of you,” Reivaro said calmly. “But a waste of effort. History is written by the winners, Mr. Yates, and whatever happens over the next few weeks or months, the Dominion of Man will be the winners.” He gave Yates a casual flick of his fingers. “But feel free to write whatever you want. I’m told that purging your anger with words is a good way to cleanse the soul.”

  “You’re the one whose soul needs cleansing,” Yates said, his stylus digging into the pad as if he was trying to poke the tip straight through the paper. “I’m going to take great pleasure in reading this personally at your trial—”

  “Quiet,” Reivaro said suddenly.

  Jin froze. Had someone spotted her? She keyed her audios, hoping she might catch a clue—

  “Broom?” Reivaro demanded softly, taking a few quick steps away from the console. “Where in hell did he come from?”

  There was a moment of silence, and Jin felt her muscles relax a bit. Clearly, Reivaro’s sudden reaction had been to a call from one of his people.

  Who apparently was outside in view of Jin’s husband. She notched up her audios a little more, wondering uneasily what Paul was up to out there.

  Whatever it was, Reivaro wasn’t happy about it. “No,” he bit out. “Damn him. Are they listening?…Damn it, Jerrant, I want rioters, not peaceful happyface protesters.”

  Jin smiled tightly. Apparently, Paul had taken it upon himself to try to spread some of his own natural calm over the frustration and anger of the workers outside. And if Reivaro’s reaction was any indication, he was succeeding.

  “No, no, that’s a terrific idea,” Reivaro said sarcastically. “Can you make it look like the shot look came from Broom or one of the other Cobras? No? Then don’t bother. Matter of fact, don’t bother with anything. Just stand down and watch. I’ll handle it.”

  He spun back around. “You finished with that yet?” he demanded.

  “I’ve got a start,” Yates said. He tore off the top sheet of paper, pressed it up against the screen of his comboard, and punched the copy key. “This will do for the moment. “Now we just…” He broke off, frowning at the comboard.

  “Did you really think I was stupid enough to allow comm functions in here?” Reivaro asked. Stepping forward, he plucked both the paper and the comboard out of Yates’s hands. “Very eloquent,” he commented as he looked at the comboard. “But you should have stuck with poetry.” Pressing the erase key, he handed the comboard to one of the Marines. “Keep it away from him,” he ordered as he crumpled the paper and stuffed it into his pocket. “We don’t want him hurting his fingers against all those buttons. You finished here, Synchs?”

  “Yes, sir, just about,” one of the men said.

  “As soon as you are, get to the next node,” Reivaro ordered. “I need to deal with something out front. And make damn sure he doesn’t get near anything breakable.”

  He strode off across the room and out the doorway into the next room. The others remained at the console another few seconds, then at a murmured comment from Synchs the
whole group trooped off in the opposite direction. A moment later, Jin was once again all alone.

  Staring at the pad of paper still lying on the console.

  Yates had seen her—she was sure of that. The big written indictment of Reivaro had to be his response to that. Some kind of message that he’d hoped to slip to her.

  But Reivaro had stood right there and read it. If it had been a message for Jin, surely he would have realized that.

  The key had to be the paper, and why Yates hadn’t just written it directly on the comboard instead of going through that extra step. Somehow, the message on paper had lost its hidden meaning once it was on the comboard.

  Jin was never going to see the note, she knew. Reivaro would hold onto it until he destroyed it. But she didn’t have to see that particular sheet of paper. The way Yates had been pressing down on his stylus, there should be a clear impression of the message on the next sheet down.

  Keeping her audios at full power, she made her way down to the factory floor. She picked up the pad, realized just in time that the whole pad disappearing might be a dangerous tipoff if someone came back here, and instead pulled off the top two sheets. Retreating into a narrow gap behind one of the machines, she studied her prize.

  She’d been right about one thing, anyway: the message pressed into the paper was as clear as the stylus’s ink would have made it.

  The actual meaning, though, was anything but.

  To Cobra Worlds legal authorities of the first circuit court: Dominion efforts to utterly break citizen rights in the west and southwest sections of DeVegas and to corner the workers, citizens, and industrialists by using the power of their office will quickly, permanently, and utterly wreck our infrastructure. This will destroy all aspects of our economy, primary plus secondaries, and leave a dismal future for first and last citizens alike.

  She read the note three times, becoming more confused with each pass. The phrasing was certainly eloquent, even poetic, but it told her nothing.

  Was there something in the way the words were written, some flourish or additional markings that the comboard would have eliminated or ignored when it scanned and reformatted the note? But she couldn’t see anything in the script that looked like it might be a code or clue. Could it be something involving the order of the words themselves, or maybe the placement? That also would have been changed by the comboard’s reformatting.

  And then, suddenly, she saw it. The second word of each line, read down the paper instead of across:

  Cobra circuit break southwest corner by office wreck all secondaries first

  Mentally, she threw Yates a salute. It was, in retrospect, the simplest and most elegant way to bring a modern factory to a sudden halt. No need to damage the machines themselves if you could cut off the power running to them.

  Especially since these circuit breakers probably weren’t the kind you could pick up at a home-supply store.

  The main breaker panel was easy to find: a large roll-up panel door with the words Main Breaker Panel printed on it in bright white letters. Behind the door were ten fuse-type circuit breakers twice the size of Jin’s upper arm fastened vertically to the panel’s back wall and linked at both ends to shielded cable conduits as big around as her wrist. The secondaries mentioned in Yates’s note weren’t nearly so obvious, and it took her a couple of tense minutes to locate them in one of the drawers of a large storage cabinet a few meters away.

  Her next move was even more problematic. She turned one of the spares over in her hands a few times, trying to figure out the best way to disable it. Unlike her home’s breakers, which could be reset after they were popped, these were single-use devices: through the heavy plastic window in the center she could see a wide strip of metal that was apparently designed to melt if it got too hot, or if the current through it ran too high.

  Fortunately, heat and current were two items Cobras had literally at their fingertips. A little experimentation showed that a couple of seconds’ worth of fingertip laser fire into one of the breaker’s connections conducted enough heat into the strip to snap it across its center. Jin gave the connector a couple more seconds of fire, watching as the half still connected to that end melted into a small reservoir cup at the breaker’s bottom.

  Three minutes later, all the rest of the backup breakers had similarly been turned into scrap and were back in their drawer.

  The breakers in the panel weren’t going to be quite so straightforward. The cables they were wired to were big and heavy, with thick grounding sheaths that would wick away most of the heat from her laser. Either she was going to have to remove the breakers, one by one, from their positions, or leave them where they were and use her arcthrower instead.

  She eyed the conduits, an unpleasant chill running up her back. Normally, the arcthrower was easy enough to use, and as safe as any weapon that involved thousands of volts of current could possibly be. Unfortunately, in this case there was a hidden but potentially lethal threat lurking beneath the surface. The arcthrower worked in conjunction with a low-power precursor blast from her fingertip laser that partially ionized the air and created a path for the current.

  She’d never tried the weapon on a line that already had high-voltage current running through it. If the voltage was high enough to run backwards along the ionized path, her first shot might end up electrocuting her.

  Still, chances were good that with the whole plant on standby the voltages running through the breakers was pretty small. She could also hedge somewhat against the danger by being off the ground when she fired. But whatever the risks, she had to try it. Putting targeting locks on the first two breakers in line, she jumped straight up and fired her arcthrower.

  She’d expected a repeat of the quiet demise of the spare breakers. No such luck. Alloys that would melt with a relatively gradual increase in heat weren’t in any way prepared to suddenly have thousands of extra volts slammed into them. The strips vaporized instantly, the force of the explosions shattering their plastic enclosures and cracking the rest of the ceramic casing.

  And suddenly, Jin was on borrowed time. Every Dominion tech and Marine within a hundred meters would have heard that double crack. She had to wreck the rest of the breakers before someone decided to come see what all the noise was about. Hitting the floor, she targeted the next four, jumped, and again fired the arcthrower.

  Only to find that her capacitors only had enough juice for three shots fired that closely together. Cursing under her breath, she again landed, targeted the next three in line, leaped and fired, then landed and target-locked the final two. She gave herself a three-second pause to make sure she had enough current, then leaped one final time.

  Only this one wasn’t one of the short hops, but a full-servo jump that should get her all the way back up to the line of hoppers and girders above her head. She fired her arcthrower on the way up, and had the satisfaction of hearing two final pops. As she reached the top of her leap, she caught the edge of one of the wider girders and pulled herself up and over on top of it.

  The nearest cover was another four meters away, but some instinct warned her that she didn’t have time to get there. Dropping flat onto her stomach on the girder, she pulled her arms tightly into her sides and lay still.

  Just in time. She’d barely settled herself against the cold metal when there was the clatter of multiple footsteps from below and at least four people rushed into the room.

  “What the—?” someone snarled, his voice so twisted with fury and disbelief that she was barely able to recognize it as Yates’s. “What in the name of hell did you do this time?”

  “That wasn’t us,” Synchs protested, sounding even more horrified by the sight of the ruined breaker board than Yates did. Small wonder—he and his fellow workers would probably bear the brunt of Reivaro’s anger when he found out about this. “We haven’t even fired up any of the—”

  “Can it butterboy,” a new voice cut him off, this one hard and suspicious. “Don’t you know sabotage when
you see it? You’ve got five seconds to tell us where he is.”

  “Where who is?” Yates countered angrily, fresh footsteps and a shift in his voice’s location showing that he was hurrying the rest of the way to the breaker box. “You’re the ones who supposedly cleared the whole place out this morning.”

  “You told the colonel we had everyone,” the voice said. “Hey—get away from there.”

  “Sure—like there’s anything more I could do,” Yates bit out sarcastically. There was the creak of metal hinges— “At least the main wiring’s still okay. We should be able to replace the breakers and get it back online. Might need to hammer out the connectors and casings a little.”

  “The alarm’s out, Lieutenant,” another new voice said. “Perimeter’s ninety percent contained. If he’s still in here, we’ll get him.”

  “I tell you, none of my people did this,” Yates insisted, the last word nearly lost in the metallic thud as he slammed the access door closed again. “You probably misprogrammed something when you were retasking one of the meldors—”

  “Shut up,” the lieutenant said. His voice was quiet, but there was something in his tone that made Yates abruptly stop talking. “Call in the outer ring and organize a search of the building. While you do that, Mr. Yates and I are going to have a chat with the colonel.”

  “What about us?” Synchs asked nervously.

  “You get back to work,” the lieutenant told him. “Yates is right—we’ll have this mess fixed soon. When it is, you won’t want to be the ones holding up the colonel’s parade. Get moving.”

  Once again, the room echoed with the sounds of footsteps heading swiftly across the room. But even as they faded away Jin had the impression that not all of the men had left. She waited another moment, then keyed in her audios.

  Sure enough, there was the sound of breathing coming from directly below her, and a set of quieter footsteps as someone moved toward the ruined breaker box. “Record damage profile,” the lieutenant’s voice came softly. “Key for analysis.” There were a few more seconds of breathing, followed by a loud creak which startled Jin until she realized it was the sound of the service door Yates had opened earlier. Another pause as the Marine apparently looked inside, then another creak and thunk as he closed it again. “Search leader, acknowledged,” he murmured, and now his footsteps were crossing the room in the direction the rest of the group had taken. “Cross-confirm all emergency exits are still set to alarm when opened. If he was able to slip outside after his attack, we’ll need an immediate mag of the search area.”