by Timothy Zahn
And watched, wide-eyed, as Zoshak casually kicked the area directly beneath the hole, breaking it free and leaving an opening that they could get through. "After you," the Djinni said, gesturing.
"How did you do that?" Lorne asked as he ducked down and slipped gingerly through into the monitor section.
"It was your laser shot," Zoshak said, sounding surprised that Lorne would even have to ask. "I noticed that as you shot at the Trofts you were also carving a circle in the glass, weakening it. I simply supplied the force necessary to break it free."
Lorne felt his cheeks warming. He'd noticed the effect Zoshak's own lasers were having on the glass, but the fact that he was doing exactly the same thing had missed him completely. "And that?" he asked, gesturing at the lower section.
"I used my glove lasers to weaken it while you were dealing with the soldiers," Zoshak said. "To the stairway?"
"To the stairway," Lorne confirmed. He crossed the room, stepping gingerly over the smoldering alien corpses, and eased his head out the door.
For the moment, the corridor was deserted. But he doubted the Trofts would leave it that way for very long. The stairway to the right was marginally closer; slipping outside, he headed that direction. If they could get down the stairway to the guardroom at the bottom, Zoshak should be able to lob one of his gas canisters in and take out the whole squad without any further fuss or bother. He reached the door and opened it a crack.
And flung it wide open as he caught a glimpse of two Troft soldiers a meter away charging across the landing toward him.
He gave them a quick burst from his sonic as he leaped forward, and as they staggered back he grabbed their lasers and wrenched the weapons away from them. "Above!" Zoshak shouted.
Lorne had just enough time to look up and see the crowd of armored figures clattering down the grillwork stairway toward him before Zoshak grabbed his arm and yanked hard, throwing him back through the door into the corridor. "Wait here!" the Qasaman shouted.
He was pulling one of the gas canisters from his belt as he grabbed the edge of the door and slammed it shut in Lorne's face.
"Damn!" Lorne snarled. Zoshak alone in there, even with that fancy Qasaman gas . . .
But it was too late to argue the point. Even if he thought he could hold his breath long enough to help Zoshak take out all those Trofts, opening the door now would let the gas dissipate out here into the corridor. Without that edge, taking on that number of enemy soldiers would probably get them both killed.
But if Zoshak thought Lorne was just going to stand here waiting for permission to rejoin the fight, he was badly mistaken. Throwing a final glare at the door, sending up a quick prayer for the Qasaman's safety, he turned and headed back toward the monitor room.
* * *
The lasers were still flashing, and the cold feeling that her younger son was dead was starting to settle into Jin's heart, when the standing warship's portside door abruptly swung open. "There!" she called loudly. "The door's open! It's open!" She started to stand up for a better look.
And was yanked back down again. "Easy," Kemp murmured. "I'm sure Harli heard you just fine. Don't make yourself a target, too."
Jin winced. He was right, of course.
But hunched close to the ground this way, she didn't have a clear view of that open door. There was no way to see if Lorne and Zoshak were both in there waiting for the spearhead team.
Or whether it was only Zoshak who was still alive.
"Damn," one of the other Cobras muttered.
Jin's heart skipped a beat. "What is it?"
"They've spotted the open door," the Cobra said tensely. "They're heading back toward it."
Jin stood straight up, shaking off Kemp's hand on her arm. Three groups of Troft soldiers were on the move, abandoning the relative safety of the armored trucks and running toward the warship, pouring laser fire through the open doorway as they went.
The other Cobras had spotted the sudden activity, too. All around Jin, the blue laser flashes intensified, their focus shifting from the trucks and the soldiers still huddled beside them to the groups converging on the open door.
But the Trofts were too far away for good shots, and many of the Cobras' lines of sight were blocked by the trucks, and the trucks themselves were stepping up their own fire in reply.
And as Jin watched helplessly, she saw that the desperate counterattack would fail. The Trofts would make it back to the ship, or enough of them would.
And whoever was waiting by the door, if her son was still alive, he wouldn't be alive much longer.
* * *
"It's open!" Freylan announced excitedly. "They did it. They got the ship's door open."
"I see," Jody said, a hard lump in her throat as she peered across the town. Yes, Lorne and the Qasaman who'd pulled off that human birdman stunt had indeed done it, fighting their way down to the bow door and getting it open.
But unless the Cobra assault force could get across the battlefield to it, the whole thing would be for nothing. And there were still a lot of soldiers, trucks, and gunfire between the edge of the forest and the warship.
And then, she saw something that froze her heart. Three groups of Troft soldiers had left the battle line and were charging back toward the open door, firing at it as accurately as they could while still running at top speed. "Freylan?" she asked.
"I see them," he said grimly. "Damn it all--I was hoping they wouldn't spot it so quickly."
"Can the Cobras out there stop them?"
"I don't know," Freylan said, sweeping the edge of the forest slowly with the binoculars. "I don't think so."
Jody took a deep breath. "In that case," she said, "it's time."
Picking up the flare pistol from her lap, she pointed it out the window in the direction of the Troft ship and fired.
The flare ignited, its red glow barely even registering amid the stuttering laser fire. Jody watched the running Trofts, waiting for something to happen.
But nothing did. Down in the town part of the invaders' sentry ring, one of the Trofts took a shot at the flare, the beam slicing through the sky beside it but missing both the parachute and the flare itself. From somewhere below came a high-pitched bellow, like a human voice trying to imitate the roar of a screech tiger.
And suddenly, the town exploded with laser fire. Some of it came from the houses and buildings, targeting the ring of Trofts inside the wall. Another group came from positions on top of the wall itself, that group cutting across the aliens racing toward the open warship door.
The Stronghold Cobras had joined the battle.
Chapter Twenty
The distant screech echoed across the battlefield, and Paul had just enough time to wonder what it was when a fresh barrage of laser fire exploded from the top of Stronghold's wall.
And as he watched from his new treetop firing post he saw the Trofts racing for the warship stagger and twitch and fall.
One of the other Cobras nearby gave a war whoop. "Way to roll, Shingas," he called even as he sent another pair of laser bolts at the nearest Troft truck. The truck replied by swiveling its gun toward him and firing back.
Targeting the gun barrel, Paul fired a pair of shots of his own. The trucks were still holding up well against the Cobras' onslaught, but someone in Paul's group of fighters had come with the idea that if they could hit the gun barrels hard enough and often enough the metal might warp enough to ruin the lasers' alignment and render them useless.
So far the plan didn't seem to have yielded much in the way of results. But Paul had nothing better to offer. The truck was still firing at the other Cobra, shredding the other's tree, its gun barrel still presenting a perfect target to Paul's own position. Targeting it again, he sent two more bolts into the metal.
And gasped as an unexpected shot from somewhere else blazed across his sight and sliced a line of pain across his exposed left leg.
He didn't remember falling from his perch, but what seemed like an instant later he fou
nd himself sprawled on the ground at the base of the tree, his eyes squeezed shut against a rain of charred wood and smoking branches, his entire leg throbbing. He groped a shaking hand toward it--
"Don't touch," a gruff voice said from above him.
Paul opened his eyes to slits. One of the other Cobras was kneeling over him, his body partially blocking the rain of debris, his face set in stone as he dug through his medical pack. "Never even saw it," Paul heard himself murmur, the small part of his brain that was still functioning amid the agony vaguely surprised at how calm his voice sounded.
"They had a backup truck all set," the Cobra said grimly. "Sent the first one out as bait, and then tried picking us off when we shot at it."
"And I fell for it." Fell for the trick, then fell out of the tree. Somehow, that struck him as incredibly funny. "How bad is it?"
"Bad enough," the Cobra said. "I've given you something for the pain and infection, but we're going to have to wrap it."
Paul nodded. The pain was starting to fade away, a strange lightheadedness moving in like a fogbank to take its place. "I'll do it," he said. "They need you out there." He reached to his throbbing leg.
To find that one entire side of it was missing. The Troft laser blast had burned out a line of skin and muscle and tendon that reached nearly all the way down to the ceramic-laminated bones.
"Get away from that," the Cobra ordered, slapping Paul's hand away from the injury. "Doesn't matter anyway. We're dead--we're all dead."
"No, we're not," Paul insisted through the gathering haze. "We can still do this."
"How?" the other demanded. "We've got nothing that can stop those damn trucks."
And as if on deliberate cue, a sudden thundering crash came from beyond the line of trees. "What the--?" the Cobra said, hopping to his feet and staring through the trees into the clear zone. Clenching his teeth, ignoring the remnants of pain in his leg, Paul forced himself up on his elbows and craned his neck to see over the low bushes in front of him.
One of the Troft trucks, either the one he'd been shooting at or the one that had shot at him, was spread out on the ground, its wheels splayed outward, its swivel gun bent uselessly, its entire roof caved in. Mashed across the crushed roof, having clearly descended at a very high rate of speed, was a mass of wrecked and unrecognizable machinery.
And then, even through the haze of the drug, Paul got it. Lifting his eyes, he peered up at the warship and the still-open drone hatch.
Just in time to see another drone float carefully out of the opening. It drifted away from the ship and moved slowly across the battlefield as if taking stock of the situation. Then, turning its nose downward, it dove at full speed toward the ground and slammed squarely into the top of a truck a hundred meters away.
And despite the pain and the knowledge that he would never walk properly again, Paul smiled. "What was that," he said to the other Cobra, "about having nothing that can stop the damn trucks?"
* * *
The last image on Lorne's monitor was that of an armored truck's roof rushing toward him. Then, abruptly, the monitor scrambled and went dark. A second later, through the hatch opening, he heard the distant boom of another Troft vehicle biting the dust.
Two trucks down. No idea, actually, of how many more to go.
But then, he didn't have to take out all of them. The eagle's-eye look he'd gotten of the battlefield with that second drone had shown that there were only three of the vehicles in position to attack the spearhead force preparing to cross the clear zone to the door Zoshak had opened for them. Those three--those two, now, actually--were the only ones he absolutely had to neutralize.
Assuming, of course, that Zoshak had in fact managed to get the door open. Both of Lorne's drones had necessarily had to start their attacks from a serious height, and he hadn't yet had a chance to float one of them lower to check out the door in person. But he'd seen a sample of Zoshak's work, and he had no reason to believe the Qasaman hadn't fully completed his job.
Time for Lorne to do likewise.
The display winked: the third drone was ready to launch. Keying over the control stick, Lorne activated the grav lifts and released the drone's rack restraints. Sooner or later, he knew, the Trofts still inside the ship with him would tumble to what he was doing and send someone in here to stop him.
Hopefully, he would finish clearing the way for his mother and her team before that happened.
One guard truck down. Two more to go. Concentrating on not banging the drone against the bay wall, he maneuvered the slender machine up and out through the hatchway.
* * *
Jin watched as a drone came for the third and final truck blocking their path to the ship. The Trofts inside the vehicle had figured out what was happening and were taking frantic steps to avoid it. The soldiers who'd earlier taken refuge inside it came boiling out through the rear doors, firing their lasers skyward as Lorne or Zoshak or whoever buzzed the drone high above their heads. The truck itself, meanwhile, had abandoned its post and was driving around in a sort of high-speed evasive course which, considering the situation, was nearly as useless as it was ludicrous.
But the soldiers weren't trained for that kind of straight-up shooting, and were moreover now within range of the Cobras in both the woods and the town. Even as they jerked and died the drone did its now familiar swan dive straight down into the desperately running truck. There was one final teeth-tingling grinding of metal on metal, and the truck slammed to a halt.
And with the final barrier down, the way was now open.
"That's it," Kemp snapped. "Let's go." He lunged up out of cover and sprinted at full speed across the clear zone toward the open warship door.
Jin had intended to be right behind him. But even as she straightened and started to run, she found herself in fourth place among the other twelve Cobras.
Mentally, she shook her head. She really was getting old.
And yet, even as she tried to emulate Kemp's evasive, broken-vector running style, she felt a surge of exhilaration run through her. This is how it should have been on her first trip to Qasama: not a lone Cobra facing danger, but a whole team of them working together to defeat an enemy. This was what she'd volunteered to become all those years ago. This, ultimately, was what she'd been created to do.
There was a close-in flash of laser light, and the Cobra running beside her gave a gasping choke and sprawled facefirst onto the ground.
Jin redoubled her pace, the adrenaline still pumping through her veins but the budding thrill of battle abruptly gone like dust in the wind. Ahead, Kemp had reached the warship door, and without even pausing to check for lurking danger he sprinted inside. Jin watched closely as the other Cobras ahead of her followed, waiting tensely for the sudden volley of laser fire from inside that would mean the open door had been a trap.
But no such enemy fire came. She reached the door, and with a final leaping step was temporarily safe. "Watch it," someone warned.
Jin keyed in her opticals, her own eyes still recovering from the dazzling display of laser fire outside. She was in a narrow room about seven meters long and three wide, with long benches along both sides and weapons racks on the walls above them, some of the clips still holding lasers and other weapons. The half-dozen Trofts who had apparently been manning the place were sprawled on the deck, dead or unconscious, Jin didn't know which. As she quickly picked her way through the bodies, she saw Zoshak and Kemp at the far end of the room, conversing in low voices beside a half-open door with a stairway visible beyond it.
"Do we seal up?" someone called from behind Jin, and she turned to see that the last member of their team had joined them inside.
Or rather, the last surviving member of the team. Four of the original thirteen, she saw, were no longer with them.
"No, leave it open," Kemp told him. "Some of the others might get a chance to join us. You stay here and watch--if the Trofts make a try for it instead, seal it up."
"The control box is on th
e wall to the right of the door," Zoshak added, pointing. "The red control should seal the door."
"The rest of you, we're heading up," Kemp said. "There are"--he grimaced as his eyes flicked over the group--"nine of us, so we'll run groups of three. Spread out, kill any Troft you run into--"
"Unless he surrenders," Jin put in. "We might want some of them kept alive for questioning."
"Unless he surrenders," Kemp confirmed, not looking especially happy about it but apparently accepting her logic. "Jasmine, Zoshak, you're with me. We'll take the top deck--the rest of you, group up and each take one of the lower decks."
"What about Lorne?" Jin asked.
"From the way those drones were hawk-diving out of the sky out there, I'd guess he's in the drone control room," Kemp said. "That was Deck Four, Zoshak?"
"Yes, sixth door on the left," Zoshak confirmed. "Shall we go to assist him?"
"No, I want us to go find that upper hatch, the one Jasmine says she got a look into on Qasama," Kemp said. "Olwen, take two men up to Deck Four--give Lorne some backup. And everyone keep an eye out for anything that might be a fire-control room. If we can get control of those wing-mounted weapons, we'll be able to end this thing right here and now."
After the firestorm of laser bolts they'd had to fight through outside the ship, Jin had expected to face much the same level of resistance inside. To her surprise, not only was the stairway deserted, but so was the Deck One corridor when they arrived there a cautious minute later. "Where is everyone?" she murmured.
"Probably in there," Kemp said, nodding at the rows of closed doors lining the corridor. "I'm betting they started out the evening with most of their actual soldiers outside, and that Zoshak and Lorne have already taken care of a lot of the ones that weren't. Now that a whole bunch of us are in here, too, their only chance is to go to ground."
"This is the deck we want," Zoshak said firmly. "This is where all the important command centers are located."
"How do you know?" Kemp asked, frowning as he cocked his head to the side. "I don't hear anything."
"The room identification plaques," Zoshak said, stepping to the nearest door and pointing to a small discolored patch beside the nearest door. "They have all been removed." He tried the handle. "And the doors themselves are of course locked."