Cobra Guardian: Cobra War: Book Two

by Timothy Zahn

  "Not that we had much time for reading," Freylan put in.

  "One reason we don't like visitors playing with Caelian gadgets," Harli said. "Any volunteers for belling the cat?"

  "I'll do it," Kemp said, producing a small coil of tie wire as he stepped to the side of the cage. "Lower it down a bit, please. Not too much--I don't want its feet touching the ground. Ms. Broom?"

  Jody handed him her stun stick, then took a long step back to watch.

  She'd dealt with giggers and their rotten dispositions a couple of times during their brief stay on Caelian, and fully expected the operation to be, at the very least, noisy and, at the very most, draw a little of Kemp's blood. Fortunately, neither prediction came true. Kemp snapped a hand into the cage and got a grip on the back of Snouts's head, transferred the animal's neck into an armlock that pinned the struggling predator firmly in place, then braided the stun stick into position with the tie wire.

  "Looks good," Harli said, nodding as he leaned in for a closer look. "Spotters, get to your positions. Remember that we want to see not only if the Trofts can hit a target right beside their hull, but also which lasers they use and what kinds of adjustments, if any, it looks like they have to make. Kemp, you stay with the gigger--release it on my signal. Tracker, Matigo, you're on fruit and fleeceback delivery. The rest of you, make a rearguard circle--I don't want something sneaking up on us while we're busy looking the other way. One minute."

  Paul took Jody's arm. "Come on--you're with me," he said, and headed off to the right. Geoff and Freylan, Jody noted, were close behind.

  Exactly one minute later, as they all watched through the trees, there was a sudden swishing of leaves and three small, dark objects arced through the darkness. Jody listened hard, and a couple of seconds later she heard the faint multiple thud as the tardrops splattered against the Troft ship. A few seconds later, with another flurry of movement and crinkled leaves, the fleeceback appeared. Sniffling audibly, it made a zigzag line toward the aroma Jody assumed was now wafting across the open ground of the clear zone.

  "If nothing else, they might at least get some scratches on their nice clean spaceship," Geoff murmured.

  Jody nodded, her fingertips tingling with memory. Despite the encyclopedia's warning that "fleeceback" was more sarcastic than descriptive, the first time she'd encountered one she'd nevertheless given in to the urge to touch the feathery soft-looking fur. The multiple finger prickings she'd received from something more akin to steel wool than the actual thing had dismayed her, amused Geoff, and worried Freylan.

  The fleeceback had apparently spotted the dripping fruit now, and the zigzags changed into a straight-in run. So far, there was no visible response from the Trofts. The fleeceback trotted to a halt, gave a quick look around for trouble, then settled in to licking up the thick juice.

  And with a final crackling of leaves, Kemp released Snouts.

  Jody had never seen a gigger hunt before, though she knew that the encyclopedia listed the species as one of the least subtle predators on Caelian. Once again, the book proved correct. Snouts took off across the clear zone, arrowing straight for the fleeceback without the slightest attempt at silence or cover. Jody held her breath as it lowered its tusks and rammed into the fleeceback's side--

  The lower front of the Troft ship exploded into a flickering crackle of blue-white light as the stun stick went off, pouring four hundred thousand volts of stored power into the fleeceback and the metal hull beyond. Through the flash and sizzle Jody saw Snouts jerk with surprise and pain as its own body caught the edge of the current flow.

  The stun stick was still spitting out its fire when the forest lit up with the brilliant flash and thundercrack of a Troft heavy laser.

  Jody still had her eyes squeezed tightly shut, the afterimage throbbing through her brain, when she felt her father's hand around her wrist. "Come on," he murmured in her ear. "Time to go."

  * * *

  "So that's that," Harli said, his voice dark and bitter. "They can fire right at the edge of their ship. Which means we're out of luck."

  "Not necessarily," Paul said. "The Trofts had plenty of time to see the parade coming at them and figure out we were up to something. It may still be that their lasers are normally geared to avoid the hull, and that they had to do some kind of manual override to hit the gigger."

  "So what?" Matigo countered. "Even if you're right about an override, it obviously only took them a few seconds to work it. That's not nearly long enough for us to get through that door."

  "Unless we can figure out a way to make that work for us," Kemp suggested thoughtfully.

  "Meaning?" Harli asked.

  "I was just thinking that if they can fire on a gigger beside the door, maybe they can fire on the door itself," Kemp said. "If so, maybe we can trick them into blasting it open for us."

  "Right," someone scoffed. "How stupid do you think they are?"

  "Stupidity isn't the issue," Paul said. "The middle of a battle is a loud, tense, nerve-wracking thing, the kind of place where people can easily make mistakes."

  "That may be how it is in the simulation room," Matigo said. "Not so sure about the real thing."

  "The real thing is even worse," Paul told him firmly. "Trust me. I've heard my wife talk about the small battles she was in on Qasama. At times like that people tend to react without thinking. The trick is to get them to react the way you want them to."

  "Maybe people are like that," Matigo said. "Trofts might be a little cooler under fire."

  "That's possible," Paul conceded. "Jin never fought actual Troft soldiers, only armed merchantmen. But my guess is even Troft soldiers get rattled if you shake them hard enough."

  "Which we don't know how to do," Matigo said.

  "No, we don't," Harli agreed darkly. "But Stronghold took them on. Maybe they do." He swore viciously. "Damn it, we have got to find out what went down yesterday."

  Jody took a careful breath. "Someone's going to have to go in there," she said. "Someone who can find out what happened and get that information back out here to you."

  "How?" Matigo retorted. "Have someone write messages on paper aircars and send them over the wall?"

  "I was thinking more about sending the data out via Dida code," Jody told him. "All that takes is a flashlight and a clear view over the wall."

  "What's Dida code?" Geoff asked.

  "It's a secret blink-code system that civilians like you two aren't supposed to know about," Paul said, an edge to his voice. "Thanks so much, Jody, for bringing that up."

  "You're welcome," Jody said tartly. "So what's wrong with the idea?"

  "Because like most games, Dida takes two to play," her father said patiently. "Unless I'm mistaken, I'm the only one here who ever served patroller duty in an Aventinian city. Cobra Uy?"

  "You're right," Harli said. "As far as I know, every Cobra on Caelian came here directly from the academy, without even interning in the Aventinian expansion regions first." He cocked his head to the side. "But we're fast learners."

  "I doubt you're fast enough," Paul said heavily. "Dida was deliberately designed to be as obtuse and hard to decipher as possible. When I served in Capitalia it took us two weeks to learn the system. I doubt you could learn it any faster."

  "Fine, so it takes two weeks," Harli said. "I don't think the Trofts are going anywhere."

  Jody braced herself. This was going to be awkward. "Or, even simpler, you could just send me in," she said. "I already know it."

  It was, she reflected, probably just as well that she couldn't see her father's expression. "You what?" he asked, sounding as stunned as Jody had ever heard him. "How?"

  "How do you think?" she said. "Back when Merrick was learning the system he needed someone to practice with." She lifted her hands, palms upward. "He was lousy at it. I was good at it. What can I say?"

  "What can you say?" Paul echoed, his famous patience teetering on the edge. "What were you thinking? What was he thinking?"

  "Yes, I kn
ow," Jody said, her own far-less-than-famous patience even closer to the crumbling point. "If it helps, we both feel terrible about it. The point is that I've got the skill, and we need it, and the thought of a D-class felony charge doesn't seem all that important out here with saberclaws and Trofts trying to kill us."

  For a long minute no one spoke. Then, Paul stirred. "You have your flashlight?"

  "Right here," Jody said, pulling it out.

  "Lowest setting," her father ordered. "Tell me you honor and respect me, that I'm thirty point two times as experienced as you are, and that you'll never break a twenty-second-degree, hullmetal-clad rule again."

  Swallowing, Jody keyed the flashlight for touch operation and set to work.

  The Dida code was every bit as complex as Paul had told Harli, and Jody had nearly forgotten how long it took to send anything with any detail to it. Three minutes later, she finally finished. "That it?" her father asked.

  "Yes," Jody said, refraining from pointing out that he already knew that. The close-off was, after all, an important part of any coded message.

  "How'd she do?" Freylan asked. "Did she get it right?"

  "Letter-perfect, actually," Paul told him. "She even got the numbers right, which is the trickiest part of the code." He looked at Harli. "I think we're in business. How do you want to work this?"

  "Well, there's no point in trying to sneak in," Harli said. Jody couldn't see his expression, but his voice suddenly sounded a lot more respectful than it ever had before, at least when he was talking to her. "With the clear zone, and the way the two ships are positioned, there aren't any blind spots where she could even get to the wall without being spotted."

  "Let alone over it," Paul agreed.

  "Right," Harli said. "So it seems to me that the best approach is for her to have been outside the city when the Trofts landed--which the city records will show she genuinely was--and only now is coming back."

  "She was out taking samples," Geoff suggested. "I mean, that's what we were doing anyway."

  "You mean we were out taking samples," Freylan said firmly.

  "Yeah, I said that," Geoff said, sounding puzzled.

  "I mean we, as in all three of us are going back in together," Freylan said.

  "Out of the question," Harli said firmly before Geoff could answer. "You two are staying here with us."

  "And letting Jody go in alone?" Freylan shook his head. "No." He leveled a finger at Geoff. "You, of all people, ought to be telling them that. You're the one who--"

  "May I have a moment alone with my colleague?" Jody jumped in, grabbing Freylan's arm. "Thank you. Come on, Freylan."

  "But--"

  "Come on," Jody said, pulling him outside the circle. "The rest of you, a little privacy, please?"

  "Make it fast," Harli growled.

  Jody nodded and kept going, pulling Freylan as far away from the others and the safety of their weapons as she dared. "Look, Freylan, I appreciate your concern," she murmured. "But they're right. You're safer out here with them than you are in there with me."

  "All the more reason for someone to go in with you," Freylan said stubbornly. "If Geoff isn't going to volunteer, it's up to me."

  "I appreciate the offer," Jody said. "But you're making it for the wrong reason."

  "What reason is that?"

  "You're being all brave and noble because you think I'm not here because of my degrees in animal physiology and management," she said. "You think Geoff invited me to join the team for some other reason entirely."

  Freylan sighed. "So you know," he said heavily. "I'm sorry. I should have stood up to him right from the beginning. But"--he waved a hand helplessly--"he can talk me into anything. He can talk anyone into anything. That's how we got our funding in the first place."

  "Which is why he's so valuable to the team," Jody said. "But you still don't get it. His reason for inviting me isn't what you think."

  "Of course it is," Freylan said, and Jody could hear the embarrassment in his voice. "I was there, Jody. I saw how he looked at your picture on the registry. His eyes just--you know--kind of . . . you know."

  In the darkness, Jody didn't even bother to suppress her sudden smile. Freylan was so earnest sometimes. Like a big, earnest, awkward dog. "He wasn't looking at my picture, Freylan," she said gently. "He was looking at my family affiliations, which are on that same registry page. That's what he was drooling over, not my face or my body or anything else."

  She could sense Freylan's frown in the darkness. "I don't get it."

  Jody sighed. Big, earnest, awkward, and innocent. "He saw that my father and brothers were all Cobras," she said. "He figured that if he got me to Caelian, one of them would probably volunteer to come along, thereby saving the team the expense of hiring someone to guard us while we were out in the wilderness collecting our samples."

  Freylan seemed to digest that. "You mean he didn't--?"

  "Of course not," Jody said, putting a little additional steel into her voice. "And if I'd even suspected he wanted me along for any sort of recreational purposes, I'd have turned him down flat."

  "But--" Freylan shook his head. "And all this time I thought . . . he's crazy, you know."

  "He's driven by thoughts of fame and fortune," Jody said dryly. "When a person like Geoff gets that taste in his mouth, everything else pretty much goes by the boards."

  "I see." Freylan straightened up. "Thank you for clearing that up. I guess I've misjudged him." He hesitated. "And you, too. I'm sorry."

  "No apology needed," Jody assured him. "Meanwhile, we are keeping everyone else waiting."

  "Right." Freylan gestured. "After you."

  They returned to the group. "Everything settled?" Paul asked, his tone suggesting that he'd probably heard more than Jody would have liked.

  "Yes," Freylan said firmly. "We're both going."

  Jody felt her jaw drop. "Freylan, I just got done explaining--"

  "I'm not going because I feel obligated on behalf of the team to protect you," Freylan said. "If the Trofts bother to look at the records, they'll see that four of us left in that aircar. We might be able to explain splitting into groups of two, but we're never going to convince them that three of us stayed together and sent one back alone."

  "He has a point," Harli said reluctantly. "The first rule of Caelian travel is to never do it alone."

  "So I go with you," Freylan concluded. "Meanwhile, your father will be here with the rest of the Cobras, where he can assist wherever they need him. If they need to trap more animals for an attack on the ships, they'll have Geoff here, too."

  Jody glared through the darkness at him. But his logic was unassailable, and he knew it. So did everyone else.

  And even if all he could do was give her moral support, she had to admit such support would be more than welcome. "I give up," she said with a sigh. "So do we head out tonight or wait until morning?"

  "Both," Harli said. "You leave from here right now, but you don't head back to Stronghold until morning. You can't plausibly leave from where you landed and pretend you didn't know the Trofts had invaded. Your site was way too close for that."

  "True," Paul agreed. "Not only did we see them come in, but we also heard the explosions when they demolished the comm towers."

  "And you'd be hard pressed to explain why you came strolling back to a city you knew had been occupied by an enemy force," Harli said. "So we're going to spend the rest of the night getting you and the aircar as far out into Wonderland as we can, so that you can innocently blunder into an occupied city all shocked and stunned by the situation."

  "What if they spot us lifting the aircar out of the forest?" Freylan asked.

  "They won't, because we're not going to," Harli told him. "We're going to turn the thing up on its side, strap five or six of our spookers to it, and haul it out through the woods."

  Jody blinked. "Oh."

  "Unless there are objections," Harli continued, in a tone that said there had better not be, "let's get to it. The
six of you on transport duty, get to your spookers. The rest of you, gather around. We've got some thinking to do."

  * * *

  Jody had never ridden any kind of grav cycle before, not even the sporty little ones she'd seen scooting around Capitalia's streets. The Caelian spookers, which were at least twice those scooters' size and rigged with clusters of spines and rim guards to keep away opportunistic predators, were intimidating to the point of borderline panic.

  But given that the other option was to walk the Caelian gauntlet, Jody didn't argue.

  At least Kemp seemed to be a competent enough driver. She rode behind him on his spooker, holding tightly to the grip bar in front of her, torn between the urge to look over his shoulder and see what dangers might be lying ahead of them, and the equally powerful urge to just press her forehead against his back, keep her eyes shut, and not know.

  From the glimpses she got of Freylan, hunched over behind Tracker, he wasn't doing much better than she was.

  Jody hadn't expected six Cobras to have any trouble turning an aircar up on its side, and they didn't. Fifteen minutes after reaching the camp, they were off again.

  It was nearly dawn by the time they reached the spot Kemp had chosen. "That's the Jakjo River," he said, pointing down the slope as the other Cobras unfastened the aircar and turned it upright again. "The place has a crazy ecology, probably because there's something in the water that supports a rollin' big number of pantra shrubs and kokkok vines. Perfect place for visiting animal researchers."

  "Sounds good," Jody agreed, feeling her pulse thudding in her throat. Up to this point most of her attention had been focused on the dangers of Caelian itself. Now, suddenly, the full magnitude of the job she'd volunteered for was looming in front of her. "Are you and the others heading back to Stronghold?"

  "Right," Kemp said. "Just as soon--" He broke off, swiveling around and snapping his leg up to send a laser shot into a saberclaw that had just been starting its leap. "As soon as you're in the air," he finished. "Oh, and once you're inside, make sure you put everything back in place. The Trofts'll find it pretty strange if they check out the aircar and find all the loose gear piled up along one side."