by Timothy Zahn
"We'll do that," Jody promised.
Kemp peered closely at her. "You ready for this?"
"No idea," Jody said honestly. "But whether I am or not, I'm doing it." She reached down and squeezed his hand. "Thanks for everything."
"No problem," Kemp said, squeezing rather shyly back. "Watch yourselves, okay?"
"You, too," Jody said. "Tell Cobra Harli that when I have something to report I'll try to find a place where I can signal due west."
"We'll watch for you," Kemp promised. "Good luck."
* * *
The trip through the forest by spooker had been a long, tedious, dangerous affair. The flight over the forest by aircar was considerably faster, and a whole lot safer. Within a few minutes, it seemed, Jody was able to see the sheen of Stronghold's wall in the sunlight now peeking over the forest to the east. "You ready?" she asked Freylan.
"Yes," he said, his voice shaking slightly. "You want me to do the talking?"
"No, that's okay," Jody said. It was probably a toss-up as to which of them was more nervous, but he sounded more nervous, and that could make all the difference. "I'll handle it."
The laser burn marks her father had told them about weren't visible right away, certainly not until after the Troft ships themselves came into view. But as Jody headed down toward their rental house she finally spotted them: small, crisply-defined black grooves in various places on the ground and several of the houses, all of them angling back toward one or the other of the warships' wing-mounted weapons.
She was searching the wall for signs of the scoring Paul had also mentioned when a two-meter-long, dartlike device suddenly appeared by her side mirror. "Whoa!" she gasped, jerking in reaction. She started to twitch the aircar away from the thing--
"Careful--there's one over here, too," Freylan warned.
Jody leaned forward and looked past him. The Trofts had the aircar flanked, all right. "Any idea what they want?"
As if in answer, the machine on Freylan's side edged over and nudged the aircar to the left. Jody tweaked her own controls that direction in response, then repeated the adjustment twice more as the dart continued its nudging. By the time it finally pulled back to its original escort position she was pointed at a spot just inside the wall and right by the northernmost Troft ship.
And as she headed for the ground Jody saw a group of armed Trofts emerge from one of the buildings beside her new landing site. They formed a semicircle around the open area, their heads and lasers pointed toward her. Keeping one eye on the lasers, Jody put the aircar down squarely in the middle of their semicircle.
"What's going on?" she called toward them as she and Freylan opened their doors and climbed out. Now that they were closer, she could see that, along with being armed, the Trofts were also wearing helmets and armored leotards. "What's wrong," she called again. "Did some screech tigers get in?"
"Identify yourselves," a flat translator-type voice came from somewhere in the group.
"I'm Jody Broom," Jody said. "This is Freylan Sonderby. Didn't we fill out the paperwork right?"
"Empty your pockets," the Troft ordered. "Everything on the ground. Now."
Grimacing, Jody obeyed, making a small pile of her comm, pen and notebook, aircar keys, multitool, wallet, and flashlight. Beside her, Freylan was doing the same. "What's going on?" she asked again as she straightened up.
Two of the Trofts left the group, their weapons leveled, and strode toward Jody and Freylan. "You will come with us," one of them said.
"Why?" Jody asked. The flat, translator voices, she could tell now, were emanating from round pins that each of the aliens had fastened to his left shoulder. "Come on, this is crazy. What's going on, anyway?"
One of the two Trofts marched straight up to her and pressed the muzzle of his laser against her chest. "You foolish humans," he intoned. "Do you think we are foolish, too?"
Jody heard a sharp intake of air, and out of the corner of her eye she saw Freylan stir, then freeze as the second Troft also jabbed his laser into his new prisoner's chest. "I don't understand," she said, a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach.
"Did you think we would not see that you were outside the wall with the koubrah-soldiers?" the Troft demanded. "Now you return to the settlement as spies."
"That's crazy," Jody insisted, knowing it was hopeless but also knowing she had to try. "We've been up by the Jakjo River since yesterday morning."
"You will learn now the fate of all enemies of the Drim'hco'plai Demesne." The Troft jabbed her again with his laser muzzle. "Turn around, and walk."
Chapter Thirteen
The water in Tyler's Creek was swift, noisy, and every bit as cold as Treakness had warned it would be. Before the group had gone even fifty meters Lorne's feet and legs were numb, and before they'd gone fifty meters more his whole body was starting to shiver violently enough that he was making little splashes in the water. The other three weren't doing any better.
In fact, as Lorne studied them, he realized they were doing considerably worse. Their breathing was shaky as they waded through the water, and their infrared signatures were slowly but steadily fading as they lost body heat. The water only came up to their waists, which meant that their torsos should be out of the direct effects of the chill, but that small advantage was effectively nullified as, one by one, they lost their footing in the current pushing against them from behind and fell full length into the creek. Before they'd made it even halfway, all four of them were soaked to the skin.
They were still a good hundred meters from Lorne's exit point when Nissa had finally had enough.
"It's no good," she gasped, her teeth chattering violently as she staggered like a drunk against Lorne's side. "The governor--this is killing him. It's going to stop his heart. We can't do this."
Lorne looked at Treakness. The older man was staggering as badly as Nissa was, his infrared signature ominously low. He was losing heat fast, and whether he had heart problems or not was no longer the point. "You're right," Lorne conceded, trying desperately to think. He'd started this trip with a plan, and his cold-numbed brain still remembered what that plan was. But at this point, with his synapses frozen together like window frost patterns, he couldn't begin to come up with a rational alternative. Maybe if they climbed up onto the slope of the cut, staying out of the water but below the level of the landing field, they could crawl their way to the exit point without being seen.
But even if they did that, wouldn't their soaked clothes be just as cold in the air as in the water? Lorne tried to reason it out, but he couldn't seem to come up with the right answer.
"No," Treakness murmured.
Lorne frowned, focusing on the governor, wondering if he was imagining things. Treakness was still barely in control of his legs, and was clutching onto Poole for support as the two of them stumbled together through the water. But even through the shivering and the chattering teeth Lorne could see the determination in the man's face. "We go on," Treakness told him. "We have to. If we don't--" Another violent shiver ran through him, and as his hands slipped from their deadened grip on Poole's shoulder he fell to his knees in the creek, his head bowed with fatigue and cold.
Lorne felt his own frozen lips curl back in a silent snarl. Nissa was right--this was insanity. But Treakness was also right--if they quit now, they might as well just turn themselves in to the Trofts.
And if a Cobra-hating governor had the strength of will to go on, Lorne was damned if he would be the one to call a halt.
"We go on," he told Nissa. Wading over to Treakness, he pulled the kneeling governor back up onto his feet. Then, stepping between him and Poole, he got an arm around each man's waist and locked his elbow servos to keep them upright. "Nissa?" he called, nodding her toward him. "Behind me--arms around my neck."
For a moment she just stared blankly at him. Then, she seemed to get it. Sloshing up behind him, she raised her arms and dropped them limply across his shoulders. Lorne turned his head to his left, pinning her l
eft arm to his shoulder. Hardly an ideal situation, but it was the best he could come up with. "Okay," he said. "Let's go."
"Lorne?"
Lorne blinked, some of the fog that had wrapped itself around his brain clearing away. He was still supporting Treakness's and Poole's sagging bodies, but Nissa was no longer hanging onto his neck from behind him. Instead, she had somehow gotten in front of him and was slapping his cheek. "Lorne!" she repeated. "We're here. Lorne?"
Lorne blinked at her . . . and then, through his mental sluggishness he heard the rumble of an approaching Troft armored carrier.
Abruptly the rest of the fog vanished. "Yeah, I'm on it," he said. "Here--hold him," he added, shrugging his shoulder and shoving Poole into Nissa's arms. Shifting his other hand from Treakness's waist to his arm, he slogged over to the spaceport edge of the creek and started climbing the bank.
He had gotten one arm up onto the grass and was hanging there, shivering and gasping for breath, when the headlights from the carrier flared like twin suns squarely in his face. There was a sudden surge of its engines as the vehicle leaped forward, the glare intensifying to a painful level. Lorne turned his face away, his eyes squeezed tightly shut, and a few seconds later the engine's surge abruptly dropped back to a rumbling idle as the carrier braked to a halt. There was a sound of metal doors being flung open--
"Over here," Lorne gasped, not trying to suppress any of the trembling in his voice. His brain still wasn't working at full power, but he remembered enough about his plan to know that the more helpless the Trofts thought he and the others were, the better. "Please--he's dying. Please."
"Identify yourselves," a flat translator voice demanded.
"Carl DeVille," Lorne said. The carrier's headlights were still blazing into his face, but with his opticals he could see that the vehicle had stopped only seven or eight meters away from him. Two of the Trofts were striding in his direction, their weapons pointed at him, while two more stood back beside the carrier in covering positions. Behind them, he saw, the rear of the vehicle was still disgorging alien soldiers. "I'm an aide to Senior Governor Tomo Treakness," he continued. "I've got the governor here with me. Please--the cold--he's going to die if we don't get him out of the water."
One of the approaching Trofts lifted a hand to cover something on his shoulder, and Lorne keyed up his audios in hopes of catching whatever the Troft was saying to his superiors. But between the distance, the blockage of the Troft's faceplate, and the background noises of the carrier and the creek he couldn't hear anything.
Only then did it occur to him that if the Trofts wanted the missing governor dead and not captured, Lorne had just effectively abetted in the man's murder.
But even before that horrible thought was fully formed the Troft lowered his hand, slung his laser rifle over his shoulder, and squatted down at the edge of the creek a meter to Lorne's left. He spotted Treakness, hanging limply half in and half out of the water, then nimbly hopped down into the creek. Wrapping his arms around the governor's waist, he pulled him free of Lorne's grip and started up the slope. By the time he was halfway to the top, two more of the aliens had joined him, and together they pulled Treakness up onto the bank. The first Troft slid back down into the creek and repeated the operation with Poole.
They were pulling Nissa up onto the bank when a pair of armored hands closed around Lorne's forearms and pulled him the rest of the way up onto the grass. His rescuers turned him over onto his stomach, maintaining their grip on his arms, as a third moved toward them, the glint of wrist shackles in his hand.
And in that instant, Lorne made his move.
He heaved upward against the hands holding his arms, pulling himself off the ground and up into a kneeling position. Swinging his arms around and forward, he wrenched them out of the startled Trofts' grips, then continued the swinging motion up and back and slammed the backs of his fists into the sides of the Trofts' helmets. As their grips vanished and they toppled sideways away from him, he curved his right hand, little finger pointed at the soldier with the wrist shackles, and fired his stunner.
The Troft twitched violently as the current slammed through him and fell flat on his back. Six meters behind him, the group of Trofts who'd taken up backup positions swung their lasers around toward Lorne, only to stagger back as a double blast from the Cobra's sonic rocked them off balance. To Lorne's left, the three aliens who had pulled the rest of the shivering humans from the creek made a desperate scramble for their own weapons, then fell to the ground as three more lightning bolts from Lorne's stunner took them out. Surging all the way up onto his feet, Lorne charged into the group of sonic-staggered aliens, his stunner and servo-enhanced hands systematically laying them out.
The driver had thrown the carrier into reverse and was trying frantically to get out of there when Lorne ran behind the vehicle, ducked inside through the still-open rear doors, and nailed him with a final stunner blast.
The carrier was still moving backwards. Lorne ran forward to the cab, hauled the unconscious driver out of his seat, then dropped onto it himself. The controls were laid out differently from those of other Troft vehicles he'd seen, but they were easy enough to figure out. Bringing the carrier to a halt, he reversed direction and drove back to where he'd left the others, turning the vehicle sharply in toward the landing field as he stopped. Climbing out of the seat, he ran back to the rear and jumped out.
Treakness, Poole, and Nissa were still sitting on the ground, huddled together for warmth, looking around in confusion and disbelief at the unconscious Trofts scattered all around them. "Up, up, up," Lorne ordered, grabbing Treakness's and Poole's forearms and hauling them up onto their feet. "Move it, before they decide to start shooting."
"We're up," Treakness said, his voice slurred but his eyes starting to come back to full awareness. Weakly, he twisted his arm free of Lorne's grip and took hold of Poole's and Nissa's. "Go get it started," he told Lorne, staggering a little as he pulled the others toward the carrier. "Go on--we're coming."
"I'll be right there," Lorne said. Stepping over to the nearest group of unconscious Trofts, he loaded two of them over his shoulders, jogged past Treakness and the others to the carrier, and dumped the two aliens inside the back. By the time the three shivering humans reached the vehicle he had added four more to the pile.
"What are you doing that for?" Treakness huffed as Lorne pulled him inside and sat him down beside one of the crew couches.
"Insurance," Lorne said as he hauled Poole and Nissa inside and closed the doors behind them. "I'm hoping they'll be less likely to shoot at us if some of their own people are aboard. Everyone sit down and hold onto one of the benches." He pulled off one of the unconscious Trofts' helmets and headed forward toward the carrier's cab, jamming the helmet over his own head as he did so.
[--report, it will be submitted at once,] a stern Troft voice ordered into Lorne's ear. [The prisoners' status, it is what?]
[The prisoners, they have broken free,] Lorne called back in cattertalk, putting an edge of urgency into his voice. The driver was still lying limply on the floor; hauling him up, Lorne maneuvered them both onto the driver's seat, positioning the Troft so that he was between Lorne and any laser fire that might come through the windshield or side windows. [The remaining soldiers, they are attempting to subdue,] he added, and jammed his foot down hard on the accelerator.
The carrier leaped forward with considerably more acceleration than Lorne had expected. [The soldiers, they cannot hold them,] he continued into his borrowed helmet's microphone, letting his earlier urgency edge toward panic. A small part of his still sluggish mind wondered if Troft solders ever actually panicked, but he also knew that putting too much calmness into his masquerade wouldn't get him what he needed.
[The soldiers, they are to shoot to kill,] the controller's voice said grimly. [Group Leader Paeyrdosi, you will respond.]
[Group Leader Paeyrdosi, he is down,] Lorne said, turning the carrier toward a group of storage and fuel outbuilding
s a hundred meters to the right of one of the big Troft warships. Behind the outbuildings he could see one of the invaders' transports; behind it, though not visible from his position, should be the Tlossie freighter that was their goal. If he could keep the charade and the Trofts' uncertainty going for two or three more minutes, they might just make it.
But even in the dark, foggy hour before dawn the Trofts weren't that gullible. [To me, who is this who speaks?] the voice in Lorne's ear demanded. [One of the humans, are you he?]
Lorne grimaced. [Understanding, I have not,] he gave it a final try. [The prisoners, this vehicle they now command. The vehicle, they have ordered--]
"Yes, one of the humans I am," Treakness's voice cut in.
Lorne twisted his head around. Treakness, holding tightly onto one of the benches beside Poole and Nissa as the carrier bounced along the landing field, had appropriated another of the Troft helmets and had it over his head. "This is Senior Governor Tomo Treakness," he continued, the words coming out proud and stern despite his still shaking voice. "I'm in control of this vehicle and this spaceport. Do as I say, or suffer a level of death and destruction the likes of which your demesne-lords have never dreamed of."
[This destruction, you yourself will unleash it?] the Troft scoffed.
"This destruction, it is already prepared," Treakness ground out. "Did your demesne-lords really think that the people foresighted enough to create Cobra warriors wouldn't know that a day of invasion would someday come to us? The entire Creeksedge area has been carefully mined with explosives, many of them directly beneath your warships, all of them now armed and with operators standing ready to ignite them."
The Troft snarled something Lorne couldn't translate. [A bluff, you make it,] the alien accused.
"You can believe that if you choose," Treakness said. "And I certainly wouldn't order the destruction of our own facility unless absolutely necessary. But even leaving that aside, you can't deny that we have several of your soldiers with us inside this vehicle. Their lives, at least, rest on your balance pin."