by Timothy Zahn
It would take about thirty seconds, Lorne knew, for Khahar to reach the narrow spot in the creek that he assumed the Marine was heading for. The optimal timing would be to give him just long enough to get there, but not enough to start across. Twenty-five seconds, he decided, and it would be time.
He fingered the rock in his right hand, freshly aware of the awful risk he was taking with Chimm’s life. The stone was twice the size of Lorne’s fist: heavy, relatively smooth, and extensively marbled with different types of rock. His theory in choosing it was that under the sudden heat stress of a laser blast it would shatter into a dozen good-sized fragments.
Lorne had seen how Dominion Marine parrot guns functioned against relatively large targets like spine leopards. The crucial question was how well they would do against something the size of the rock. If they worked as Lorne hoped, Chimm would end up merely unconscious, probably with only minimal physical damage.
If they didn’t, the Marine would end up dead.
Fifteen seconds. Lorne set his teeth together, trying to shift his focus from Chimm’s life to the deaths of the three Cobras in Archway. Whether or not Chimm or Khahar had been directly involved in that incident, they were part of the Dominion and they shared its guilt. He would do his best to preserve their lives, but he would give no guarantees.
Five seconds. Lorne tightened his grip on the stone and eased his left hand along the spine leopard’s underside to rest against its lower torso, right at its center of mass. Taking a deep breath, his mind flashing back to his memories of the war on Qasama, he settled his mind into combat mode.
The timer hit zero. Bracing himself against the damp ground, he convulsively straightened his left elbow, throwing all the power of his arm, chest, and hip servos into the effort, and lobbed the carcass in a high arc straight at Chimm’s back.
The darkness of the forest exploded into a brilliant strobe-light display of blue light as the parrot guns’ defensive programming kicked into full gear, blasting every laser in the Marine’s epaulets at the incoming threat.
And as the already dead animal began to disintegrate into a cloud of smoke and blackened skin, Lorne threw the rock as hard as he could at Chimm’s head.
The parrot guns tried their best, spotting the new threat and retasking some of the lasers to deal with it. But too many of them were already engaged, and the rock had a much higher heat capacity than living tissue, and there simply wasn’t enough time. The stone shattered into fragments under the barrage, just as Lorne had anticipated, and those fragments slammed with devastating force into the back and side of Chimm’s helmet.
The helmet was strong enough to take the impact without serious damage. Chimm’s skull wasn’t. Without a sound, he toppled to the ground, the charred spine leopard carcass landing with a second muffled thud across him. Scrambling to his feet, Lorne bent his knees and jumped.
He was crouched on a branch in the arrowcrest tree directly above Chimm when Khahar burst into view.
If Khahar had had another few seconds he might have suspected a trap. With a few seconds more, he might have noticed that the dead spine leopard he’d seen beside the log earlier was missing. But he didn’t have any of those seconds. His partner was on the ground, there was a predator lying across him, and in that first instant there would be no doubt whatsoever in his mind as to what had happened. Sprinting through the last few clumps of bushes, glancing reflexively around him as he ran, he reached Chimm’s side.
And as he started to crouch down into a crouch beside the unconscious Marine, Lorne dropped out of the tree.
Once again, the defense system did its best. But the Marines were ground forces, and their parrot guns had clearly been designed to deal with threats coming mainly from ground level. The lasers once again blazed into action, sizzling out a V-shaped wedge of fire as Lorne dropped toward his target. But they couldn’t shoot straight up, and the design and width of the epaulets meant that even the sharpest angles of fire were too wide to deal with the threat coming from the sky.
The lasers were still firing uselessly when Lorne’s boots crashed down onto Khahar’s shoulders, crushing his epaulets and parrot guns and slamming the Marine to the ground beside Chimm and the spine leopard.
The parrot guns cut off, and darkness flowed back into the forest. Blinking a couple of times against the afterimages, keying in his opticals to take up the slack while his eyes adjusted, Lorne stepped off Khahar and knelt beside the two Marines. If he’d miscalculated with either of his attacks…
To his relief, he hadn’t. Both men were still breathing, their heart rates slow but steady. Chimm would likely awake to a severe headache and probably a mild concussion, and Khahar would awake to some broken bones and maybe a concussion of his own. But they would awake.
And with that, Lorne had another decision to make.
He straightened up, his body trembling with adrenaline reaction as he gazed down at the unconscious Marines. By now, his parents were long gone from Archway—that was pretty much a given. As far as he knew, the Dominion shuttles were only landing in Capitalia, and there was still a chance the prisoners were on hold somewhere in the Dome while Chintawa and Santores thrashed out jurisdiction. If Lorne was fast enough, there was a chance he could get there before any final decisions were made.
But it was a slim chance. Legal limbo or not, his parents would certainly be under the watch of more Dominion Marines. Lorne had been able to set the stage here in the DeVegas forest, and he’d been lucky. He couldn’t count on having either of those advantages the next time.
The alternative was to go into hiding. That one had a much higher chance of success. He knew DeVegas province far better than Reivaro did, not just its geography but also its people. Even under martial law, there would probably be some who would be willing to hide him while he figured out his next move.
Finally, there was the Braided Falls thing McDougal had mentioned. If there were still supplies and equipment there, and if he could find them, he might be able to get by for awhile without having to involve the locals at all.
He looked down at the two Marines. The smart move, he knew, would be to go to ground.
But then, no one had ever accused him of being smart.
Half an hour later he was in the Marines’ aircar, burning through the night sky. With luck, Khahar’s failure to capture him wouldn’t be reported until he’d reached his destination.
If it was…well, he’d face that bridge when he got to it.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Jody was in the middle of a restless dream about being caught in one of her own animal traps when she was startled awake by a sudden thud against her door.
She stared into the darkness, her heart pounding, trying to sort out the dream from reality. The thud had sounded like a knock, but up until now none of the Dominion people had ever bothered to request permission before entering her cell.
Could it have been something from the ship’s engines? That was an even more terrifying thought than her dream. If Tamu was starting up the Squire’s engines it either meant he’d succeeded in getting Omnathi aboard or else had given up and decided to settle for the half-loaf that was Jody herself.
And then, across the room, the door slid open to reveal the figure of a man silhouetted against the corridor light.
Or rather, two men. One was standing, the other was crumpled in a heap on the floor.
“Jody Moreau?” a voice murmured.
“Yes,” Jody said, throwing off the blankets and jumping out of bed, a trickle of cautious relief whispering through her. There was only one group of people who habitually and stubbornly emphasized the Moreau side of her family. “Djinni Ghushtre?”
“Yes,” Ghushtre confirmed. “Come—we must hurry.”
“Right,” Jody said, already pulling on her silliweave tunic and trousers. Grabbing her shoes, she padded quickly to the door. “Ready—”
From somewhere in the near distance came a high-pitched sound, more felt than heard, and sudden
ly the universe twisted violently around on its ear. Jody grabbed for the door jamb, missed, and was heading face-first toward the floor when Ghushtre caught her arm and steadied her. “Careful,” he warned, his attention on something down the corridor.
“I’m okay,” Jody said, focusing on Ghushtre’s chest as the world slowly straightened out again. She tried again for the door jamb, made it this time, then leaned close to Ghushtre and looked past him down the corridor.
Just in time to see one of the other Qasamans a few doors down fire a burst of current from his hand into one of the room locks. The door slid open in response, and there was another disorienting jolt as the Qasaman fired a sonic burst into the room. He paused for a moment, possibly assessing the situation, then moved briskly toward the next door in line.
Jody caught her breath. The Qasaman had fired that lightning bolt from his hand. Not from a Djinn combat-suit glove, but from his bare hand.
Ghushtre and his companion weren’t Djinn. They were Cobras.
She turned her eyes back to Ghushtre. “Indeed,” he confirmed, an edge of grim amusement in his voice as he helped her the rest of the way through the doorway and pointed toward the ship’s bow. “We must leave while Kaza clears the rest of the sleeping soldiers from our backtrail.”
“Right,” Jody said as they headed down the corridor. “Remember that there will probably be a couple more Marines in full combat gear by the hatchway.”
“That’s as expected,” Ghushtre said. “If we can take them by surprise we’ll be all right.”
Jody nodded, bracing herself as another burst of sonic came from behind them. From what she’d seen of the Marine combat suits she wasn’t at all sure taking them by surprise would even be possible. But Ghushtre seemed to know what he was doing, and this was no time to stop and discuss it.
In fact, maybe the third Qasaman, Nisti, was already on it. From what she’d seen of Qasamans, she wouldn’t be at all surprised to find the sentries already sprawled unconscious on the ground outside the ship.
She and Ghushtre were within ten meters of the hatchway when the question suddenly became moot. Two Marines suddenly appeared around the corner from the short entryway corridor, still very much conscious. They stopped in the center of the corridor, their parrot gun epaulets gleaming in the corridor light, their stance practically dripping with arrogance and challenge.
Ghushtre braked to a halt, pulling Jody back and then pushing her another meter behind him. Again she fought for balance as a Cobra sonic echoed off the walls and ceiling.
But the off-duty Marines and crewers that Kaza was stunning behind her weren’t wearing combat suits. This pair was, and the sonic washed over them without any noticeable effect. Ghushtre fired a second burst, then began backing away, his grip on Jody’s arm giving her no choice but to retreat with him.
If he was expecting the Marines to just stand there and watch, that hope didn’t last very long. “Halt!” one of the Marines ordered, and in unison they strode forward toward the retreating prisoners.
“No!” Ghushtre called back, increasing his pace.
“Wait,” Jody protested, trying to free her arm from Ghushtre’s grip. Backing away from the Marines did nothing but move them further from the hatch and freedom. They needed to stand their ground, maybe duck into one of the rooms and fight from there. Anything except retreat. The Dominion wanted Jody alive—maybe she and Ghushtre could use that fact to advance on the Marines with Jody in front. If she could prevent them from using their parrot guns until Ghushtre was close enough to bring one of his other weapons into play, they might still have a chance. She opened her mouth to suggest it—
Without warning, Ghushtre screamed.
Jody jerked with surprise and shock at the completely unexpected sound. Her whole body twitched, her feet stumbling and threatening to tangle with each other. The Marines, as unaffected by the scream as they had been by the sonics, merely kept coming.
They’d made it three more steps when the plate over the storage bin they were crossing exploded upward, carrying both Marines with it and slamming them with bone-breaking force into the low ceiling. There was a muffled grunt from one of them, and then men and plate clattered to the floor and lay still.
It was only then, as Nisti hopped calmly out of the open bin that Jody belatedly realized what had just happened. “Take them by surprise,” she said.
“A weapon that cannot fire downward begs to be turned against its owner,” Ghushtre said calmly as he reversed direction and again pulled her along with him toward the hatchway. Nisti was already on his way, and out of the corner of her eye Jody saw that Kaza was sprinting up behind them. “Quickly, now, before reinforcements can be brought against us.”
They reached the hatch without encountering any further trouble. The heavy door was closed, but the instructions for opening it were printed on its surface in white letters. Nisti headed for the control board and keyed in the printed opening sequence. Ghushtre strode past him to the door itself, grabbed the wheel in the center, and tried to turn it.
The wheel didn’t budge. “Again,” Ghushtre murmured.
Nisti was already rekeying the command. “Try now,” he said.
But the wheel still wouldn’t turn. “We blast it,” Ghushtre decided, taking a couple of steps back and giving Jody a shove that sent her three quick steps farther than that. He shifted his weight onto his right leg and lifted his left, aiming his antiarmor laser at the hatch’s edge.
“Don’t bother,” a voice came from a speaker over the control board. “That’s forty centimeters of solid hullmetal. It would take you hours to burn a hole through it.”
Jody frowned. It was Lieutenant Commander Tamu, but his voice was so stiff and tense that for that first moment it was almost unrecognizable.
“Very clever,” Tamu continued in that same taut voice. “Come in pretending to be Qasaman Djinn, only you’re actually Qasaman Cobras. I can see why Nissa Gendreves and the others are so upset that Paul Broom gave Isis to you.”
Ghushtre made a series of quick hand gestures. Kaza and Nisti nodded and headed silently up the stairway. “If you know of Isis, you know what we are capable of,” Ghushtre called toward the speaker. “I also do not believe it will take more than an hour for us to open the hatch. Shall we make a test of it?”
“You open fire on that hatch, and you’ll live to regret it,” Tamu warned. “This isn’t a freighter or pleasure vessel, Ghushtre. It’s a ship of war.”
“I thought it was a courier,” Jody murmured.
“Even couriers of the Dominion Fleet are ships of war,” Tamu countered. “We have two gunbays, fully armed and armored. Both are manned, and both are locked off and inaccessible to you. In addition, there are still four combat-suited Dominion Marines inside Stronghold. If you take any further action against me, I’ll order retribution against the people of Caelian.”
“Have a care, Commander Tamu,” Ghushtre said, his voice dark. “Action against unarmed civilians would bring more destruction upon you than you can dream of.”
“There’s no need for violence,” Jody put in quickly. Qasamans had a low threshold for threats, and she had no desire to learn where Ghushtre’s trigger point was. “All we want is for you to go away and leave us alone. Open the hatch and let us out, and we can be done with this.”
“You know I can’t do that,” Tamu said. “Commodore Santores needs to see you.”
“I thought I was just a small fish.”
“I’d be happy to trade you for something bigger,” Tamu said. “Counter-offer: if you and your companions surrender now, I promise there will be no repercussions for your actions of the past few minutes.”
“There will be no surrender,” Ghushtre said flatly. “But you speak of a trade. Let me offer a different such bargain: your life for ours.”
The speaker hissed with Tamu’s snort. “Clearly, you’re unfamiliar with Dominion warships,” he said. “Just as the gunbays are sealed, so are CoNCH and engineering. You can�
��t get in, not even with Cobra weaponry, any more than you can blast your way out through the hatch.”
Frowning, Jody peered back down the corridor. Sure enough, the door she’d seen yesterday leading into the engineering section was closed.
And though it was hard to tell at this distance, it looked to be the same material as the hatchway and the Squire’s hull.
“So we have a stalemate,” Ghushtre said.
“Not for long,” Tamu said. “The Marines in Stronghold are preparing to move on the Government Building. Their orders are to take Uy and Omnathi into custody and bring them here.”
“They will not succeed,” Ghushtre warned. “Not four men. Not against a world full of Cobras and Djinn.”
“I think they will,” Tamu said. “Shall we make a test of it?”
Jody frowned. Suddenly, something that had been nagging at the back of her mind came into focus.
The ship was quiet. Extremely quiet, with only the soft whooshing of the air system to fill the gaps in the threat-filled conversation.
Only it shouldn’t be. Tamu was under attack from within and was facing the possibility of threat from without. Even more telling, he’d threatened in turn to open fire on the people of Stronghold.
A definite and serious threat, assuming Tamu wasn’t lying about the gunbays…except that the Squire wasn’t in any position to carry it out. It was sitting here in the landing area, hundreds of meters from the city itself. The only way for Tamu to bring his guns to bear—on anyone—would be to physically raise his ship and fly it over there.
So why hadn’t he started his engines? There was only one reason Jody could think of.
And if she was right…
“This is ridiculous,” she spoke up, cutting off whatever threat or counter-threat Ghushtre had been starting to make. “Shahni Omnathi doesn’t have any idea where Qasama is, so if that’s what you’re going for you’re out of luck. But if Commodore Santores really just wants to talk to him—as an equal—then I say let’s do it and get it over with.”