The Cobra Trilogy

by Timothy Zahn

  D'arl tapped two fingers on the arm of his chair. "Maybe next time they'll know better."

  "Possibly. But I doubt it." H'orme leaned back in his chair with a tired sigh. "Anyway, this is the situation we have to live with. What do you suggest as our next move?"

  D'arl pursed his lips. H'orme had been doing this a lot lately, and whether it was due to simple mental fatigue or a conscious effort to sharpen the younger man's executive capabilities, it was a bad sign. Very soon now, D'arl knew, H'orme's hot seat was going to pass to him. "We should obtain a listing of all returning Cobras and their destinations," he told H'orme. "Then we should set up local and regional data triggers to funnel all government-accessible news concerning them directly to you, with special flags for criminal or other abnormal behavior."

  H'orme nodded. "Agreed. Have someone—Joromo, maybe—get started on it."

  "Yes, sir." D'arl stood up. "I think, though, that I'll do this one personally. I want to make sure it's done right."

  A ghost of a smile flicked across H'orme's lips. "You humor an old man's obsession, D'arl, and I appreciate it. But I think you'll find—you and the rest of the Committee—that the Cobras are going to have far more impact on the Dominion than even I'm afraid of." He turned his chair to gaze out the window at the city below. "I just wish," he added softly, "I knew what form that impact was going to take."

  Veteran: 2407

  The late-afternoon sunlight glinted whitely off the distant mountains as the shuttle came to rest with only a slight bounce. Army-issue satchel slung over his shoulder, Jonny stepped out onto the landing pad, eyes darting everywhere. He had never been all that familiar with Horizon City, but even to him it was obvious the place had changed. There were half a dozen new buildings visible from the Port, and one or two older ones had disappeared. The landscaping around the area had been redone with what looked like newly imported off-world varieties, as if the city were making a concerted effort to shake off its frontier-world status. But the wind was blowing in from the north, across the plains and forests that were as yet untouched by man, and with it came the sweet-sour aroma that no cultural aspirations could disguise. Three years ago, Jonny would hardly have noticed the scent; now, it was almost as if Horizon itself had contrived to welcome him home.

  Taking a deep breath of the perfume, he stepped off the pad and walked the hundred meters to a long, one-story building labeled "Horizon Customs: Entry Point." Opening the outer door, he stepped inside.

  A smiling man awaited him by a waist-high counter. "Hello, Mr. Moreau; welcome back to Horizon. I'm sorry—should I call you 'Cee-three Moreau'?"

  " 'Mister' is fine," Jonny smiled. "I'm a civilian now."

  "Of course, of course," the man said. He was still smiling, but there seemed to be just a trace of tension behind the geniality. "And glad of it, I suppose. I'm Harti Bell, the new head of customs here. Your luggage is being brought from the shuttle. In the meantime, I wonder if I might inspect your satchel? Just a formality, really."

  "Sure." Jonny slid the bag off his shoulder and placed it on the counter. The faint hum of his servos touched his inner ear as he did so, sounding strangely out of place against the gentle haze of boyhood memories. Bell took the satchel and pulled, as if trying to bring it a few centimeters closer to him. It moved maybe a centimeter; Bell nearly lost his balance. Throwing an odd look at Jonny, he apparently changed his mind and opened the bag where it lay.

  By the time he finished, Jonny's two other cases had been brought in. Bell went through them with quick efficiency, made a few notations on his comboard, and finally looked up again, smile still in place.

  "All set, Mr. Moreau," he said. "You're free to go."

  "Thanks." Jonny put his satchel over his shoulder once more and transferred the other two bags from the counter to the floor. "Is Transcape Rentals still in business? I'll need a car to get to Cedar Lake."

  "Sure is, but they've moved three blocks farther east. Want to call a taxi?"

  "Thanks; I'll walk." Jonny held out his right hand.

  For just a moment the smile slipped. Then, almost warily, Bell took the outstretched hand. He let go as soon as he politely could.

  Picking up his bags, Jonny nodded at Bell and left the building.

  * * *

  Mayor Teague Stillman shook his head tiredly as he turned off his comboard and watched page two hundred of the latest land-use proposal disappear from the screen. He would never cease to be amazed at how much wordwork the Cedar Lake city council was able to generate—about a page a year, he'd once estimated, for every one of the town's sixteen thousand citizens. Either official magforms have learned how to breed, he told himself as he rubbed vigorously at his eyes, or else someone's importing them. Whichever, the Trofts are probably behind it.

  There was a tap on his open door, and Stillman looked up to see Councilor Sutton Fraser standing in the doorway. "Come on in," he invited.

  Fraser did so, closing the door behind him. "Too drafty for you?" Stillman asked mildly as Fraser sat down on one of the mayor's guest chairs.

  "I got a call a few minutes ago from Harti Bell out at the Horizon Port," Fraser began without preamble. "Jonny Moreau's back."

  Stillman stared at the other for a moment, then shrugged slightly. "He had to come eventually. The war's over, after all. Most of the soldiers came back weeks ago."

  "Yeah, but Jonny's not exactly an ordinary soldier. Harti said he lifted a satchel that must have weighed thirty kilos with one hand. Effortlessly. The kid could probably tear a building apart if he got mad."

  "Relax, Sut. I know the Moreau family. Jonny's a very even-tempered sort of guy."

  "Was, you mean," Fraser said darkly. "He's been a Cobra for three years now, killing Trofts and watching them kill his friends. Who knows what that's done to him?"

  "Probably instilled a deep dislike for war, if he's like most soldiers. Aside from that, it hasn't done too much, I'd guess."

  "You know better than that, Teague. The kid's dangerous; that's a simple fact. Ignoring it isn't going to do you any good."

  "Calling him 'dangerous' is? What are you trying to do, start a panic?"

  "I doubt that any panic's going to need my help to get started. Everybody in town's seen the idiot plate reports on Our Heroic Forces—they all know how badly the Cobras chewed up the Trofts on Adirondack and Silvern."

  Stillman sighed. "Look. I'll admit there may be some problems with Jonny's readjustment to civilian life. Frankly, I would have been happier if he'd stayed in the service. But he didn't. Like it or not, Jonny's home, and we can either accept it calmly or run around screaming doom. He risked his life out there; the least we can do is to give him a chance to forget the war and vanish back into the general population."

  "Yeah. Maybe." Fraiser shook his head slowly. "It's not going to be an easy road, though. Look, as long as I'm here, maybe you and I could draft some sort of announcement about this to the press. Try to get a jump on the rumors."

  "Good idea. Hey, cheer up, Sut—soldiers have been coming home ever since mankind started having wars. We should be getting the hang of this by now."

  "Yeah," Fraser growled. "Except that this is the first time since swords went out of fashion that soldiers have gotten to take their weapons home with them."

  Stillman shrugged helplessly. "It's out of our hands. Come on: let's get to work."

  * * *

  Jonny pulled up in front of the Moreau home and turned off the car engine with a sigh of relief. The roads between Horizon City and Cedar Lake were rougher than he remembered them, and more than once he'd wished he had spent the extra money to rent a hover, even though the weekly rate was almost double that for wheeled vehicles. But he'd made it, with a minimum of kidney damage, and that was what mattered.

  He stepped out of the car and retrieved his bags from the trunk, and as he set them down on the street a hand fell on his shoulder. He turned and looked five centimeters up into his father's smiling face. "Welcome home, Son," Pearce Mo
reau said.

  "Hi, Dader," Jonny said, face breaking into a huge grin as he grasped the other's outstretched hand. "How've you been?"

  Pearce's answer was interrupted by a crash and shriek from the front door of the house. Jonny turned to see ten-year-old Gwen tearing across the lawn toward him, yelling like a banshee with a winning lottery ticket. Dropping into a crouch facing her, he opened his arms wide; and as she flung herself at him, he grabbed her around the waist, straightened up, and threw her a half meter into the air above him. Her shrill laughter almost masked Pearce's sharp intake of breath. Catching his sister easily, Jonny lowered her back to the ground. "Boy, you've sure grown," he told her. "Pretty soon you'll be too big to toss around."

  "Good," she panted. "Then you can teach me how to arm wrestle. C'mon and see my room, huh, Jonny?"

  "I'll be along in a little bit," he told her. "I want to say hello to Momer first. She in the kitchen?"

  "Yes," Pearce said. "Why don't you go on ahead, Gwen. I'd like to talk to Jonny for a moment."

  "Okay," she chirped. Squeezing Jonny's hand, she scampered back toward the house.

  "She's got her room papered with articles and pictures from the past three years," Pearce explained as he and Jonny collected Jonny's luggage. "Everything she could get hard copies of that had anything to do with the Cobras."

  "You disapprove?"

  "Of what—that she idolizes you? Good heavens, no. Why?"

  "You seem a bit nervous."

  "Oh. I guess I was a little startled when you tossed Gwen in the air a minute ago."

  "I've been using the servos for quite a while now," Jonny pointed out mildly as they headed toward the house. "I really do know how to use my strength safely."

  "I know, I know. Hell, I used exoskeleton gear myself in the Minthistin War, you know, when I was your age. But it was pretty bulky, and you couldn't ever forget you were wearing it. I guess . . . well, I suppose I was worried that you'd forget yourself."

  Jonny shrugged. "Actually, I'm probably in better control than you ever were, since I don't have to have two sets of responses—with power amp and without. The servos and ceramic laminae are going to be with me the rest of my life, and I've long since gotten used to them."

  Pearce nodded. "Okay." He paused, then continued, "Look, Jonny, as long as we're on the subject . . . the Army's letter to us said that 'most' of your Cobra gear would be removed before you came home. What did they—I mean, what do you still have?"

  Jonny sighed. "I wish they'd just come out and listed the stuff instead of being coy like that. It makes it sound like I'm still a walking tank. The truth is that, aside from the skeletal laminae and servos, all I have is the nanocomputer—which hasn't got much to do now except run the servos—and two small lasers in my little fingers, which they couldn't remove without amputation. And the servo power supply, of course. Everything else—the arcthrower capacitors, the antiarmor laser, and the sonic weapons—are gone." So was the self-destruct, but that subject was best left alone.

  "Okay," Pearce said. "Sorry to bring it up, but your mother and I were a little nervous."

  "That's all right."

  They were at the house now. Entering, they went to the bedroom Jame had had to himself for the last three years. "Where's Jame, by the way?" Jonny asked as he piled his bags by his old bed.

  "Out at New Persius picking up a spare laser tube for the bodywork welder down at the shop. We've only got one working at the moment and can't risk it going out on us. Parts have been nearly impossible to get lately—a side effect of war, you know." He snapped his fingers. "Say, those little lasers you have—can you weld with them?"

  "I can spot-weld, yes. They were designed to work on metals, as a matter of fact."

  "Great. Maybe you could give us a hand until we can get parts for the other lasers. How about it?"

  Jonny hesitated. "Uh . . . frankly, Dader, I'd rather not. I don't . . . well, the lasers remind me too much of . . . other things."

  "I don't understand," Pearce said, a frown beginning to crease his forehead. "Are you ashamed of what you did?"

  "No, of course not. I mean, I knew pretty much what I was getting into when I joined the Cobras, and looking back I think I did as good a job as I could have. It's just . . . this war was different from yours, Dader. A lot different. I was in danger—and was putting other people in danger—the whole time I was on Adirondack. If you'd ever had to fight the Minthisti face-to-face or had to help bury the bodies of uninvolved civilians caught in the fighting—" he forced his throat muscles to relax—"you'd understand why I'd like to try and forget all of it. At least for a while."

  Pearce remained silent for a moment. Then he laid a hand on his son's shoulder. "You're right, Jonny; fighting a war from a star ship was a lot different. I'm not sure I can understand what you went through, but I'll do my best. Okay?"

  "Yeah, Dader. Thanks."

  "Sure. Come on, let's go see your mother. Then you can go take a look at Gwen's room."

  * * *

  Dinner that night was a festive occasion. Irena Moreau had cooked her son's favorite meal—center-fired wild balis—and the conversation was light and frequently punctuated by laughter. The warmth and love seemed to Jonny to fill the room, surrounding the five of them with an invisible defense perimeter. For the first time since leaving Asgard he felt truly safe, and tensions he'd forgotten he even had began to drain slowly from his muscles.

  It took most of the meal for the others to bring Jonny up to date on the doings of Cedar Lake's people, so it wasn't until Irena brought out the cahve that conversation turned to Jonny's plans.

  "I'm not really sure," Jonny confessed, holding his mug of cahve with both hands, letting the heat soak into his palms. "I suppose I could go back to school and finally pick up that computer tech certificate. But that would take another year, and I'm not crazy about being a student again. Not now, anyway."

  Across the table Jame sipped cautiously at his mug. "If you went to work, what sort of job would you like?" he asked.

  "Well, I'd thought of coming back to the shop with Dader, but you seem to be pretty well settled in there."

  Jame darted a glance at his father. "Heck, Jonny, there's enough work in town for three of us. Right, Dader?"

  "Sure," Pearce replied with only the barest hesitation.

  "Thanks," Jonny said, "but it sounds like you're really too low on equipment for me to be very useful. My thought is that maybe I could work somewhere on my own for a few months until we can afford to outfit the shop for three workers. Then, if there's enough business around, I could come and work for you."

  Pearce nodded. "That sounds really good, Jonny. I think that's the best way to do it."

  "So back to the original question," Jame said. "What kind of job are you going to get?"

  Jonny held his mug to his lips for a moment, savoring the rich, minty aroma. Army cahve had a fair taste and plenty of stimulant, but was completely devoid of the fragrance that made a good scent-drink so enjoyable. "I've learned a lot about civil engineering in the past three years, especially in the uses of explosives and sonic cutting tools. I figure I'll try one of the road construction or mining companies you were telling me about that are working south of town."

  "Can't hurt to try," Pearce shrugged. "Going to take a few days off first?"

  "Nope—I'll head out there tomorrow morning. I figured I'd drive around town for a while this evening, though; get reacquainted with the area. Can I help with the dishes before I go?"

  "Don't be silly," Irena smiled at him. "Relax and enjoy yourself."

  "Tonight, that is," Jame amended. "Tomorrow you'll be put out in the salt mines with the rest of the new slaves."

  Jonny leveled a finger at him. "Beware the darkness of the night," he said with mock seriousness. "There just may be a pillow out there with your name on it." He turned back to his parents. "Okay if I take off, then? Anything you need in town?"

  "I just shopped today," Irena told him.


  "Go ahead, Son," Pearce said.

  "I'll be back before it gets too late." Jonny downed the last of his cahve and stood up. "Great dinner, Momer; thanks a lot."

  He left the room and headed toward the front door. To his mild surprise, Jame tagged along. "You coming with me?" Jonny asked.

  "Just to the car," Jame said. He was silent until they were outside the house. "I wanted to clue you in on a couple of things before you left," he said as they set off across the lawn.

  "Okay; shoot."

  "Number one: I think you ought to be careful about pointing your finger at people, like you did at me a few minutes ago. Especially when you're looking angry or even just serious."

  Jonny blinked. "Hey, I didn't mean anything by that. I was just kidding around."

  "I know that, and it didn't bother me. Someone who doesn't know you as well might have dived under the table."

  "I don't get it. Why?"

  Jame shrugged, but met his brother's eyes. "They're a little afraid of you," he said bluntly. "Everybody followed the war news pretty closely out here. They all know what Cobras can do."

  Jonny grimaced. It was beginning to sound like a repeat of that last, awkward conversation with Ilona Linder, and he didn't like the implications. "What we could do," he told Jame, perhaps a bit more sharply than necessary. "Most of my armament's gone—and even if it wasn't, I sure wouldn't use it on anyone. I'm sick of fighting."

  "I know. But they won't know that, not at first. I'm not just guessing here, Jonny; I've talked to a lot of kids since the war ended, and they're pretty nervous about seeing you again. You'd be surprised how many of them are scared that you'll remember some old high school grudge and come by to settle accounts."

  "Oh, come on, Jame. That's ridiculous!"

  "That's what I tell the ones that ask me about it, but they don't seem convinced. And it looks like some of their parents have picked up on the attitude, too, and—heck, you know how news travels around here. I think you're going to have to bend over backwards for a while, be as harmless as a dove with blunted toenails. Prove to them they don't have to be afraid of you."