Cobra Guardian: Cobra War: Book Two

by Timothy Zahn

  Poole cleared his throat. "I think he was trying not to let the Trofts see the flash--"

  "Shut up, Poole," Treakness cut him off. He was still glaring, but Lorne could see the anger starting to fade as he realized his aide was right. "Fine, so you're brave and strong and clever. Now what?"

  "First, we find a place to stash the evidence," Lorne said, looking around. The closest stashing place was the trash container where the animal had been hiding. "Wait here," he said, and crossed the street to the bin.

  He'd hoped he would be able to dump the carcass inside, but the overhead conduit that carried the building's trash out to the bin fit too snugly for him to slip the animal through. He had to settle for shoving the animal behind the bin, pushing it as far out of sight as he could.

  The others were looking nervously around when he rejoined them. "Come on, come on," Treakness muttered. "Another two blocks and we'll hit Palisade Park. Mostly low buildings around it, so we should be able to see all of the nearby Troft ships from there."

  "Sounds good," Lorne said, glancing around at the five- and six-story structures rising up around them. "Again, no talking unless absolutely necessary, and keep those footsteps quiet."

  They had made it halfway down the next block when Lorne began to pick up the distant hum of motors and the dull thuds of thick metal hitting pavement. They had covered another quarter block when the rumble of heavy-duty engines--a lot of them--began.

  They had reached the next street, and Lorne was peering carefully around the corner building, when the rumble of engines became a line of boxy vehicles lumbering past along Cavendish Boulevard a block away, each heavily armored and sporting a swivel gun on its roof.

  "What is it?" Treakness murmured.

  Grimacing, Lorne stepped back and gestured for him to look. Treakness eased his head around the corner, watched for a few seconds, then drew back again. "So much for getting to the park," he said tightly.

  "The Trofts?" Poole asked anxiously.

  "No, the Ghirdel Pastry Express truck," Treakness snarled. "Use your brain, Poole."

  "Enough of that," Lorne ordered. "Everyone be quiet a minute."

  The others froze. Lorne keyed up his audios again, trying to hear beyond the roar of the traffic rolling past a block away. As far as he could tell, that particular convoy was the only one in the immediate area. "It just seems to be that one bunch," he said, lowering the audios. "Any idea where they might be going?"

  "That seems like way too much firepower just to take down the Five Points patroller station," Treakness said thoughtfully. "I'm guessing they're sending those personnel carriers to some central place, probably Five Points, where they'll set up a command base and send the rest of the vehicles out in ones or twos to block and control the rest of the major intersections." He gave Lorne a look of strained patience. "Yes, I have studied a bit of military theory, thank you."

  "But if they block all the intersections, how are we going to get past them?" Nissa asked nervously.

  "That's the question, all right," Treakness agreed. "Hopefully, our brave and clever Cobra escort will come up with something brave and clever."

  "Hold it," Lorne said, holding up a hand as he caught a flicker of grav-lift red reflecting from the side of one of the buildings to the east. Reflections were always tricky, but whatever it was definitely appeared to be moving in their direction. "Someone's coming," he said, looking around for the entrance to the building beside them. It was about twenty meters back along the street, beneath a small sign that read wei kei's. "We need to get to cover."

  The door was locked, but his fingertip lasers made quick work of the mechanism. The four of them slipped inside and Lorne pulled the door mostly closed again behind them.

  As he did so, he saw one of the Trofts' transports settle into the intersection one block north. He stood motionless, the door still open a crack, and watched as the side hatches opened and another group of spine leopards strode out onto the street.

  "What is it?" Treakness's voice came from behind him.

  Lorne eased the door closed. "More spine leopards," he said.

  "Terrific," Treakness growled. "Now what?"

  Lorne looked around. They were standing in a narrow exit hallway stretching between the door and an unlit dining room, with a kitchen area visible through a wide doorway to their right. Obviously, Wei Kei's was a restaurant. "I need to find a way up to the top floor," he said. "See if I can spot a clear route west."

  "Good idea," Treakness said, peering over at the kitchen. "We'll stay here. Poole, go check out that kitchen and see if you can find us something to eat."

  Poole's eyes went a little wide. "Uh--sir, do you think we should do that?"

  "This is a restaurant, Poole," Treakness said brusquely. "I'm a senior governor, this is an emergency situation, and I'm hungry. Go get me something to eat."

  Poole swallowed visibly. "Yes, sir," he said, and hurried through the doorway into the kitchen.

  Nissa touched Lorne's arm. "May I come with you?" she asked, her voice strained. "An extra pair of eyes might be useful."

  "Yes, take her," Treakness seconded. "Don't be too long."

  "It won't be safe for her," Lorne said between clenched teeth. Apparently, Treakness didn't want witnesses while he raided the restaurant's kitchen. "I'll have to go back outside to get to the main building entrance, and there's a new crop of spinies that's just arrived out there. I may have to do some quick dodging to get around them."

  "We don't have to go outside," Nissa said. "There's an inside entrance, too, near the front of the restaurant. I've seen it the couple of times that I've eaten here."

  "We'll check it out." Lorne eyed Treakness. "If anyone comes down from the apartments while we're gone, your job is to keep them calm."

  "I know what my job is," Treakness said coolly. "You just remember what yours is."

  The stairway Nissa had mentioned wasn't exactly a true inside stairway, but ran from the street parallel to the restaurant's southern edge. But there was another access door just inside the street entrance that opened up into that corner of the dining room. Again, it was locked, and again Lorne's lasers took care of that. Pulling open the door, they slipped into the stairway and headed up.

  The stairway was fairly narrow, covered with sturdy but inexpensive carpeting, lined by undecorated walls. There were four apartments on each floor, each taking up one corner of the building, with a second stairway and a small elevator at the far end of each of the long landings. The landings themselves were deserted, but a quick tweaking of Lorne's audios at each stop picked up the sounds of people moving around inside the apartments.

  "Which one do we want?" Nissa asked as they arrived at the top floor.

  "This one," Lorne said, nodding toward the southwest apartment. Stepping to the door, he knocked.

  For a moment there was no response. Lorne knocked again, then keyed in his audios. Someone was definitely in there, several someones, all of them trying very hard to be quiet. "Hey!" he called. "We need to look out your windows."

  There was another short silence. Then, Lorne heard stealthy footsteps approaching. "Who is it?" a nervous voice called through the door.

  "It's Nissa Gendreves from Governor-General Chintawa's office," Nissa called back before Lorne could answer. "It's urgent that we come in."

  There was one final pause, and then Lorne heard the clicking as the longlock was disengaged. The door opened a crack and a tense, unshaven face peered out. "I'm Nissa Gendreves," Nissa repeated. "This is Lorne Broom."

  "What do you want?" the man asked suspiciously, looking back and forth between them. "What the hell's going on out there?"

  "That's what we're trying to find out," Lorne told him. "A quick look out your windows, and then we'll be gone."

  "I don't think I've seen you before," the man said, his eyes narrowing as he studied Lorne's face. "Who do you work for?"

  "He's with Senior Governor Treakness," Nissa said, stepping forward past Lorne and givin
g the door a gentle but firm push. The man grimaced, but backed out of the way, and Nissa walked past him into the apartment. Lorne followed, staying close behind her. "You're one of Syndic Priesly's aides, right?" Nissa added over her shoulder.

  "Yes," the man said as he closed the door behind them. "Kovas Brander. Why didn't anyone tell us this was going to happen?"

  "Because nobody knew," Nissa said as the three of them strode past a pair of bedroom doors and into the living room. A tense-looking woman was sitting on a narrow couch, clutching two silent, wide-eyed young children to her sides. "It's all right," Nissa added, nodding to them. "We're with Governor-General Chintawa's office."

  "Yes, I heard," the woman said nervously. "Do you know what's going on?"

  "So far, only that Capitalia's been invaded and is on its way to being fully occupied," Lorne told her as he and Nissa crossed to the windows and eased back the curtains.

  Lorne had expected to see armed Troft soldiers spilling out of the armored vehicles they'd seen earlier, lasers held high as they roamed the streets of their newly conquered city. The aliens out there were definitely soldiers, garbed in visored helmets and heavily armored versions of the same leotards the species usually wore, with heavy laser rifles slung over their shoulders.

  But they weren't exactly roaming, and the five-meter-long cylinders they were hauling out of the troop carriers didn't look like weapons. Frowning, Lorne focused on two of them as they lugged their burden over to the building on the southwest side of the intersection he and Nissa were looking down onto. The Trofts set the cylinder upright against the building's corner, and as Lorne keyed in his infrareds he spotted the subtle yellow flashes as the cylinder was molecularly welded to the building.

  And then, to his astonishment, the Trofts began to unroll the cylinder into a fine mesh, working their way northward across the street.

  "What in the Worlds?" Nissa breathed.

  Lorne didn't answer, frowning in confusion as the Trofts reached the other side of the street, pulled the mesh as tight as they could, and again welded it to the corner of the building there. A quick slash from a plasma torch cut the rest of the roll free, and the two aliens picked it up and headed north toward the next open space.

  "They're fencing off the street," Brander said disbelievingly from beside Lorne.

  "He's right," Nissa confirmed. Pressing the side of her ear to the glass, she looked as straight down as she could. "They're putting one up on this side, too."

  "But that's crazy," Brander protested, "I mean, hell, you can cut the stuff with a torch--I just saw them do it. How do they think it's going to keep us in?"

  Lorne focused on the fence the Trofts had just created. Five meters tall, the same height as the fences around most of the major wilderness towns.

  And then, he got it. "You're missing the point," he said, stepping around Nissa and moving to the far southwest corner of the room. From his new vantage point he could see a few blocks down the side street the Trofts had just blocked off, far enough to see a similar double barricade being erected around the major avenue three blocks away. "They're not trying to keep us in. They're trying to keep the spine leopards out."

  "The what?" Brander asked.

  "You're right," Nissa said, her voice suddenly taut. "Oh, God."

  "What spine leopards?" Brander demanded.

  "They're bringing in spine leopards," Nissa told him. "We've already seen two transports letting groups of them out onto the streets."

  "And it looks like there are more on the way," Lorne said, nodding toward a pair of distant transports as they disappeared beneath the city's skyline.

  Brander cursed under his breath. "Where are the damn Cobras?" he demanded. "Isn't that why we've got them, to handle things like this?"

  Lorne turned toward him, a sudden surge of anger tightening his stomach-- "They are handling it," Nissa said, throwing Lorne a quick warning look. "Or they were. We saw five of them out in the street, taking out that first group. They were doing fine until the Trofts killed them."

  "And they didn't fight back?" Brander demanded. "Well, hell. What are we paying them for anyway?"

  "Brander, go see to your family," Lorne ordered, jerking his head toward the woman and children. "Nissa, I need you over here, please."

  Brander made as if to speak, took a second look at Lorne's expression, and seemed to think better of it. Turning, he walked back across the room.

  "I'm sorry," Nissa said quietly as she stepped to Lorne's side.

  "Yeah," Lorne growled back. Of course she was sorry now, now when it was too late to do anything. Where had her sorry been back when people like Treakness were demanding the Cobra program be gutted to save a few klae from the budget?

  For that matter, where had the people of the Cobra Worlds been when Treakness had first won his seat by making loud promises to support those cutbacks? Were the people who'd voted for him and his allies even now staring out their windows at the Troft soldiers and vehicles, cursing the Cobras just like Brander had for not saving them?

  He took a deep breath, striving for some of his father's and brother's inborn calm. The past was the past, and so were its mistakes and conceits. Holding onto it would just siphon off mental energy that he desperately needed elsewhere. "Stand here and look due west," he told Nissa, motioning her to the corner of the window. "You see how the street three blocks away is also being fenced in?"

  "Yes," she said. "You think they're crosshatching the city?"

  "I don't think so," Lorne said. "Why bother fencing both sides of the same street if they're just doing a crosshatch?"

  "Corridors, then?" Nissa suggested. "Maybe they're setting up patrol routes that their soldiers can use without worrying about spine leopard attacks."

  "If that's the plan, they're in for a rude awakening," Lorne said. "Like Brander said, that mesh may keep spinies out, but you can cut it with a torch. We do that, and they'll be in the same boat we are."

  "Humans of Aventine," a computerized voice called faintly from somewhere below them. "Humans of Aventine, awake and listen."

  "Do these open?" Lorne called to Brander, running his fingers along the window's edges as he searched in vain for a catch.

  "Yeah, I'll get it," Brander said, bounding up from the couch and hurrying over. He did something, and the window swung open a few centimeters.

  "Humans of Aventine," the Troft voice came again, much louder and clearer this time. Lorne nudged up his audios as the voice ended, and caught three distinct and distant echoes. Apparently, the Trofts were delivering the same message simultaneously across the whole city. "Humans of Aventine, awake and listen."

  "We are awake, you son of a chicken," Brander muttered. "Get on with it."

  "Humans of Aventine, in payment for the crimes of your government, you are now under the rule and authority of the Trof'te Assemblage. If you cooperate without resistance, you will not be harmed, and will be permitted to continue your daily lives.

  "Your first orders are the following: For the next three hours you are to remain inside your residences or other interior locations; when the three hours have ended, you will have permission to emerge, but only into the fenced zones which we are currently building. All humans traveling outside those zones will be subject to immediate death.

  "Also at the end of those three hours, your chief leaders will meet us in the assembly center known as the Dome, where detailed instructions will be delivered to them. Any of the chief leaders who fails to attend will also be subject to immediate death."

  Lorne looked sideways at Nissa, and found her looking back at him. Would the invaders even know who all the governors and syndics were? Probably. Everything else that had happened, from the coordinated predawn invasion to the efficient fencing work, indicated that they knew what they were doing. They would spot Treakness's absence, all right, and they would certainly call Chintawa on it.

  Hopefully, the governor-general could work up a plausible story for them. If not, their already tight tim
etable was likely to get a lot tighter.

  "One final order," the loudspeaker below boomed. "Any human who hides or assists an armed patroller or a koubrah-soldier will be punished. Any human who exposes the existence and location of an armed patroller or koubrah-soldier will be rewarded."

  The loudspeaker fell silent . . . and Lorne felt a shiver run up the back of his neck. A day ago, back in the expansion region, he would have dismissed any such carrot/stick ploy as a pathetic waste of time. He knew the people out there, and there was no way they would turn on him or the rest of the men who risked their lives on a daily basis to protect them.

  But he was in the city now, surrounded by people with Brander's same attitude of contempt or indifference toward those guardians. What would they do with the handful of Cobras still among them? How big would the promised rewards and threatened punishments have to get before the betrayals started?

  Or would the carrots and sticks not even be necessary? Would the people turn in the Cobras simply out of spite for their perceived failure in preventing the invasion in the first place?

  He could feel Nissa's eyes on him. Deliberately, he didn't look back at her. "Sounds like that's it for now," he said, forcing his voice to remain calm. "Come on, we'd better get back downstairs."

  "Wait a minute," Nissa said slowly.

  Lorne turned, to find that he'd been wrong about her looking at him. In fact, she was frowning out at the cityscape below. "What is it?" he asked.

  "This doesn't make any sense," she said, pointing down the side street. "That's Broadway over there, the one they're fencing off. It's mostly shopping, with the Gregorius Omni a block north and the Wickstra Performing Arts Center four blocks south."

  "Okay," Lorne said, pulling up his own somewhat hazy memories of the central city's layout. "So?"

  "So most of the residences in this area are between here and there," Nissa said. "In fact, almost all of them are, since there aren't even many of these store-and-apartment setups on Broadway. Nearly everything there above the shopping levels is office space."

  "Again, so?" Lorne said, still not seeing where she was going with all this.