Cobra Gamble (2 page)

"Impressive," Zoshak called down as he returned the section of catwalk to its proper place. "We look forward to seeing what you can teach us."

"As I'm looking forward to learning your tricks," Lorne called back up. "Hurry back."

"I shall." Zoshak straightened up and offered his arm to Jin. "Shall we go?"

"Thank you," Jin said, nodding at the catwalk and curling her hands into fingertip-laser firing position. "But first we need to tack that down. Warrior won't be happy if one of his crewers bumps it loose and falls through. I'll do these two corners—you take the other two." 

CHAPTER TWO

It was an hour after sundown, and the stars were blazing down through the canopy of trees above them, when the fourteen men from the Qasaman village of Milika arrived at their chosen hunting spot.

"There," Gama Yithtra murmured, pointing toward the north. "Do you hear them?"

"Yes," Merrick Moreau Broom murmured back as he keyed in his optical enhancers. The trees were thick in that direction, but he was able to catch glimpses of the grav lifts' glow through the branches. From the high infrared output, he guessed the Trofts had been at this for at least three hours. "Sounds like four of them, all spotters. I don't hear a transport."

"Don't worry, it's here," Yithtra said. "Marslo Charak saw it late in the afternoon, about two kilometers west." He turned to Merrick, his lips twisting in a smirk. "It would seem that your worlds are about to receive yet another dose of your own chosen medicine."

Merrick didn't answer. The second Troft invasion of Qasama was well underway, with all the alien ships that had fled two weeks ago already returned, with probably more on the way. The scattered reports that had come in from the rest of the Great Arc indicated that the invaders were unhurriedly and systematically blasting the capital city of Sollas to rubble, and had put the Qasamans' other four main cities and three smaller ones under siege. So far the Trofts seemed to be mostly ignoring the villages, but Merrick knew it was only a matter of time before the sky out here would also fill up with alien warships.

Yet in the midst of all that, Yithtra somehow always managed to find time to get in a dig about what the Trofts were probably doing to Aventine and the other Cobra Worlds with the razorarms they were harvesting from Qasama's forests.

Earlier that day, Merrick had tried explaining to Yithtra why the Cobra Worlds had seeded Qasama with the predators two generations ago, that it had been an attempt to free the Qasamans from the subtle grip of the semi-sentient native birds called mojos. But Yithtra hadn't seemed interested in hearing the Cobra Worlds' side of the story, and Merrick had given up the effort.

Fortunately, not everyone in Milika was so antagonistic toward their offworld visitor. Most were at least neutral toward him, while a few had apparently heard reports from friends or relatives about the battles in Sollas that Merrick and his mother had taken part in. Those few treated Merrick with a degree of actual respect. And even some of the neutral ones were starting to get tired of Yithtra's verbal barbs. "Seems to me there's plenty of medicine to go around," an older Qasaman named Balis Kinstra growled. "Can we perhaps keep our minds on the job, Gama Yithtra?"

"My mind
is
on the job," Yithtra said calmly. "Teams of two: spread out and find the freighter. You, Balis Kinstra, since you're such a friend of demon warriors, will pair with Merrick Moreau. Runners meet back here in thirty minutes with reports."

There were murmurs of acknowledgement, and the Qasamans paired up and slipped away into the woods.

"I must apologize for Gama Yithtra," Kinstra said as the others' footsteps faded into the forest. "He doesn't speak for all of us."

"I know that," Merrick assured him. "And to be honest, he has a point."

"Point or not, this is not the place for such debates." Kinstra gestured around them. "You're the one most experienced with these invaders. What are your thoughts?"

Merrick looked around them. During the Trofts' first incursion onto Qasama, the aliens had simply sent out spotter aircraft equipped with infrareds and motion sensors to locate their target razorarms, which were then neutralized with small tranquilizer gas bombs. When the spotters decided they had enough for a pick-up, a freighter would put down in a convenient clearing and armed parties would go out to collect the sleeping predators.

The parties had been careful to steer clear of the villages scattered through the forest. But they'd quickly learned that avoiding the villages didn't necessarily mean avoiding the villagers. The rural Qasamans were just as outraged by the invasion as their city counterparts, and while there were few actual soldiers among them there were plenty of expert hunters.

It wasn't long before the Trofts discovered the flaw in their harvesting technique: there simply weren't all that many clearings large enough for even a small freighter to put down in. That meant the harvesting parties had to locate a suitable landing spot before they sent out their spotter ships. All the Qasamans had to do was study the search pattern and figure out which clearing the Trofts were planning to use, then be waiting in force when the freighter put down.

The Trofts had lost a couple of harvesting parties before they caught on. Their next approach had been to create their own clearings, blasting the trees with lasers and occasionally with missiles from above so that the villagers wouldn't know in advance where they would be landing.

The Qasaman response had been to track the razorarms, concentrating on the larger family groups that the Trofts preferred, and scatter their own hunters around the most likely target zones. Often they guessed wrong, but there were enough times when they guessed right. And of course, once the trees started falling, any team within earshot knew exactly where the evening's entertainment was going to be held.

The harvesting had stopped, along with all other Troft activity, when the Sollas forces drove the invaders off the planet. But with this second incursion the razorarm raids had resumed. The aliens' latest tactic was to not land the freighters at all, but to simply hover over their latest prize and rappel a team of soldiers down to roll the sleeping animal onto a lift pad and winch it up.

Unfortunately for them, hovering freighters made wonderful targets, and the five days of calm between invasions had given the Qasaman military enough time to get a few heavy weapons into the villagers' hands. Two of the village teams south of Milika had succeeded in severely damaging Troft freighters with mortar fire a couple of days ago, and there were rumors that a team still farther south had destroyed one completely.

The Troft response had been to again halt the hunts, and for the past two nights the spotters and freighters had stayed close to the forces besieging the cities. But tonight they were back.

Merrick was looking forward to seeing what new wrinkle they'd come up with.

"For starters, I'm guessing they're finished with the hover-and-rappel approach," he told Kinstra. "That one cost them way too much."

"Agreed," Kinstra said. He paused, and with his enhanced vision Merrick saw the man's nose wrinkle. "You smell that?"

Merrick took a cautious sniff. The air was brimming with the usual mix of Qasaman woodland aromas. "Is there something different?" he asked.

"I don't know," Kinstra said, sniffing harder. "It just smells odd. Like... springtime."

Merrick frowned. "Come again?"

"I know that sounds strange," Kinstra said. "But it just smells somehow like it's springtime."

"Okay," Merrick said, sniffing the air again. Like that would help. He'd been on Qasama barely three weeks, and was just now starting to figure out which aromas came from cooking or perfumes and which were from the local flora and fauna. Even the spine leopards the Cobra Worlds had seeded here, the predators the Qasamans called razorarms, smelled slightly different than they did on Aventine. Probably a result of their altered diet.

There was a sudden quiet rustle from the trees behind them. Merrick spun around, his arms snapping up and his hands curling into fingertip-laser firing positions. Sure enough, there was a razorarm back there, striding through the undergrowth.

But it wasn't heading toward Merrick and Kinstra. In fact, it didn't seem to even notice the two humans. It was angling somewhere off to Merrick's right, its ears twitching, the mojo clinging onto its back fluttering its wings for balance. The predator and its avian symbiont passed by and disappeared again into the forest.

"That's odd," Kinstra murmured. "I've never seen a razorarm do
that.
They always at least
look
at a hunter. So does the mojo."

"Assessing the threat versus snack benefits," Merrick agreed, frowning after the departed razorarm. It had been a long time since he'd been on duty out in Aventine's frontier region, but there was something about the way the razorarm had moved that had seemed vaguely familiar.

And then, abruptly, he got it. The razorarm's disinterest, the spring-like smell, the predator heading directly into the gentle wind—"It's pheromones," he told Kinstra. "The Trofts are using razorarm mating pheromones. In the spring, when it's mating season—"

"Yes, yes, I understand," Kinstra interrupted hastily. The Qasamans had a long list of topics that were taboo for casual, non-family conversation, and reproductive issues were near the top of that file. "Clever. They send up spotter aircraft to distract our attention while luring the razorarms to an entirely different location."

"Clever and elegant both," Merrick agreed. "Certainly compared to some of the other stuff they've been pulling lately." He gestured after the animal. "I'll go after it, see if I can find the pickup spot. You wait here until the runners get back and follow me."

"No time," Kinstra said. "It's thirty minutes until the runners return, and then they'll have to go back and collect their hunt-mates. If the invaders are smart, they'll have gathered their quota and left by then."

Unfortunately, he was probably right. The Trofts had certainly had enough experience with the Qasaman attack teams to have figured out their typical response profile. "You'd better stay here anyway," he said. "Gama Yithtra may return early, and he'll be highly annoyed if he misses the party."

"Gama Yithtra's wounded feelings aren't our concern," Kinstra said tartly. "We go together." He gestured in the direction the razorarm had gone. "And this talk wastes time."

Merrick hesitated, then nodded. "All right," he said. "Quickly, and quietly."

Kinstra slung his rifle over his shoulder. "Lead the way."

Quickly
was easy. The forest floor was deeply dark at night, but Merrick's optical enhancements were more than able to compensate. He circled the various trees and bushes with ease, dodging the more subtle obstacles nearly as effortlessly. Kinstra, running two meters behind him, would be making sure he precisely hit each of the Cobra's footprints.

Quietly
was more problematic. If there was a way to move silently through knee-high branches and a bed of dead leaves, Merrick had never learned it.

But that was all right. The Trofts would be expecting to hear the sound of large creatures traveling through the undergrowth.

And then, suddenly, they had arrived. Through the trees, Merrick spotted a curved wall of dark metal in the middle of a clearing, with silent figures moving restlessly back and forth in front of it.

He slowed to a halt, signaling for Kinstra do the same. "There," he whispered, pointing.

"I see them," Kinstra whispered back as he unslung his rifle from his shoulder. "We need to get closer."

Merrick considered suggesting the other stay back while he scouted, decided it would be a waste of breath, and nodded. "Quietly."

A minute later, they had reached the last line of big trees at the edge of the clearing. They took up position behind two of the largest and Merrick cautiously peered out.

The freighter was a bit smaller than some he'd seen the Trofts use. But it looked more than capable of the task of hauling predators across the forty-five light-years separating Qasama and Aventine. There were four Trofts on guard duty, their laser rifles held ready, a compact missile launcher squatting on the ground in front of them like a short cylindrical guard dog. Four more of the aliens were off to the side, maneuvering a sleeping razorarm onto a cart for transport through the open hatchway behind them.

Kinstra leaned close. "Launcher."

Merrick nodded. The Trofts' tiny antipersonnel missiles had proved to be one of the invaders' most devastating weapons. Their primary targets were always Qasamans radio transmitters, after which they were designed to home in on the sounds of gunfire and the heat signatures of large lasers. Daulo Sammon, Merrick's mother's old friend from her first covert visit to this world some three decades ago, had been severely wounded by one of those missiles during the Qasamans' first counterattack back in Sollas.

Throughout the twelve days of Merrick's own recovery the Qasaman doctors had pumped him full of their exotic rapid-healing drugs, one side effect of which had been to leave his memories of his convalescence extremely hazy. Still, he could distinctly remember several occasions where he'd asked about Daulo. What he couldn't remember was whether he'd ever gotten a straight answer back.

With an effort, he shook away the thought. His recovery was still incomplete, and while his current regimen of drugs didn't make him go all loopy the way the last batch had, they did have a tendency to encourage mental wandering.

He focused again on the enemy encampment. The missile launcher was definitely the first thing on their to-do list. Merrick keyed a target-lock onto the launcher's base, where the weapon's sensor/guidance array was located, then turned to the roving soldier patrol. They were wearing full armor, but at this range a shot from the antiarmor laser running down Merrick's left leg should cut through the aliens' neck protection with ease and rack up a couple of quick kills.