Cobra Guardian: Cobra War: Book Two (11 page)

"Good," Koshevski said, taking Lorne's arm and pointing down the corridor toward the rear door. "After you."

There was a lone spine leopard wandering the street when Lorne eased the rear door open and stepped outside. The predator turned at the sound of the door, or possibly at the scent of fresh prey, and for a moment it eyed the rash human who had invaded its territory. But either it wasn't yet hungry, or else it hadn't finished staking out that part of the block as its territory. With a sniff and a brief flaring of its foreleg spines, it turned and walked away. "Clear," Lorne murmured over his shoulder, stepping aside and giving the rest of the street a quick look. No one was visible, human or Troft. "Where's this access point?"

"Right there," Koshevski said, pointing toward a round metal cover set flush into the street midway down the block, colored and textured to match the pavement around it. "Gripper holes in the edge--just grab them and pull straight up."

Lorne nodded and headed off down the walkway at a quick jog. He reached the cover, got his fingers into the gripper holes, and pulled. The cover was heavier than it looked, but his finger locks and arm servos were more than up to the task, and with a little effort he levered it up.

Treakness and the others were there by the time the way was clear. "You first," Treakness murmured, gesturing Koshevski down into the dank-smelling hole.

Koshevski nodded. Sitting down on the edge of the hole, he found one of the two sets of embedded rungs with his feet and started down. Treakness was right behind him, followed by Poole, followed by Nissa. Balancing the cover on its edge, Lorne stepped into the opening and worked his way a couple of rungs downward. Then, spreading his legs and balancing himself, he picked up the cover and lowered it back into place, plunging them all into nearly total darkness. Keying in his opticals, he got his hands on the rungs and started down.

He'd gone only a few steps when, warned by the sound of footsteps and rustling cloth, he was able to key down the enhancers just as Treakness turned on the flashlight from his pack.

A minute later he arrived at the bottom, and found himself in a small chamber with meter-and-a-half-diameter cylindrical conduits leading off horizontally in four directions. "We go this way," Koshevski murmured, taking the flashlight from Treakness and shining it down the southward conduit.

"Why can't we just go west?" Treakness asked.

"Could, but won't," Koshevski said. "My brother is on West Twenty-Third, remember? Follow me. And be quiet--sound travels real good in here."

Bending over, he stepped into the conduit and headed off, the light bobbing drunkenly as he walked along the curved surface. Treakness followed, his hands splayed awkwardly to both sides for balance. Poole was again close behind him. Nissa paused long enough to give Lorne a strained smile, then followed.

Grimacing, Lorne watched them go, feeling a sudden twinge of claustrophobia as he eyed the narrow opening. But it was better than facing Troft lasers. Bending at the waist and the knees, he eased his way into the conduit. If this worked, he reminded himself firmly, they were going to gain almost half the distance to the spaceport and get a significant jump on the Trofts' efforts to lock down the city.

If it
didn't
work, this was going to be a very uncomfortable place to get caught in an ambush.

But there was nothing to do now but see it through. Keying up his audios as much as he dared, keeping a wary eye on their rear, he hurried to catch up.

Chapter Six

It was five kilometers back to Stronghold as the aircar flew. By foot, Jody knew, it would be seven or eight. On Aventine, even the longer trip would be no more than a brisk two-hour walk. With a good nine hours remaining until sundown, she had wondered earlier what her father had meant with his comment about pushing their available daylight.

Within the first fifty meters of their journey, she'd figured it out.

The spores and other tiny plants that rode the Caelian wind were bad enough inside Stronghold. Here, away from the protection of the town's high wall, they were far worse. They whipped across her face and hands, tickling her ears and neck, and generally making a nuisance of themselves.

There were larger versions as well, versions that seldom made it into Stronghold. Some of those had tiny hooks designed to catch on something--anything--that would provide an opportunity for growth. They could actually sting if one of the hooks managed to snag a particularly sensitive section of skin, reminding Jody of her first experience on an Aventinian beach, when a rising wind had whipped sand across her face.

And of course, the eddy currents created by the trees and landscape meant that the whole spectrum of airborne plants could come from any direction, not just that of the prevailing wind.

The insects were out in force, too, following right behind the spores. In theory, since the spores didn't attach to living skin, the insects didn't have any reason to land on Jody's face or hands and try to take a bite. In actual practice, a lot of them did anyway. Others, the clumsier ones no doubt, simply lumbered into her, bouncing off and continuing on their way. The majority, content with merely swarming around the intruders, added their own layer of distraction and irritation.

Jody had known about all that from their previous times outside the town, and had mentally prepared herself for it. What she hadn't expected was the ferocity of Caelian's larger forms of plant life.

Stronghold was kept largely devoid of native plants, except for the handful that had been cultivated or were in the process of becoming so. She'd seen some of those, and of course she'd also seen the vegetation that had covered their testing area landing site before she and the others had burned it off.

It somehow had never occurred to her that perhaps Geoff and Freylan had chosen that spot precisely because of its lack of the nastier forms of Caelian plant life.

But all those forms were here now, splashed across the ridge that her father had chosen as their path. There were plants that tried to tangle her feet, and others that grabbed onto her trouser legs with tiny or not-so-tiny hooks, barbs, and thorns and tried to either trip her or shred the silliweave material. Other varieties exuded poisons or skin irritants or adhesives, the latter rather like Aventine's native gluevines, only worse. And even the innocuous plants did their bit to conceal tangled tree roots, ground insect mounds, or more dangerous plants.

In view of all that, it was probably remarkable that the group made it a full hundred meters before they had their first accident.

It happened to be Freylan, though in retrospect Jody realized it could have been any of them. Carrying the rear poles of the gigger's cage, he got his foot caught in a tangle of vines and sprawled facefirst on the ground. That by itself wouldn't have been so bad, but his left hand unfortunately hit the low hill of one of Caelian's antlike insect forms. This species was fortunately not poisonous or even biting, but enough of them got up his sleeve before he could disengage that he had to strip off his entire outfit in order to get clear of them.

Jody dutifully faced away from the situation, which was why she missed the additional drama of her father lasering a pair of orctangs that tried to take advantage of the party's preoccupation and creep up on them.

They got Freylan put back together and continued on, only to run into a patch of blue lettros fifty meters later lurking beneath a stand of solotropes. Paul was able to burn away just enough of the patch's end for them to get around it, but barely ten meters further on they hit a line of blue treacle that went all the way down the ridge on both sides. That meant there was no going around it, which meant Paul had to not only cut their way through the plants themselves but then use his arcthrower to systematically flash-burn a path through the adhesive that the lasered plants leaked all over the ground. That single patch took over half an hour to pass.

Midway through the operation they were attacked by two whisperlings that Paul had to kill. At the far edge of the patch, just as they were starting to pick up some speed again, he had to fend off two hooded clovens. Through all of it, Snouts never stopped growling once.

The next incident was Jody's, involving a nest of micewhiskers that she managed to kick as she was trying to avoid a patch of hookgrass, and left her with a bruise on her forehead and some madly itching scratches on her cheek. Her father and Geoff took the brunt of the next one, when a branch Paul was cutting fell the wrong way and sent some tendrils of poison shink whipping across both their faces. The resulting inflamed scratches not only itched, but hurt as well.

Still, the animal attacks were the most serious threat. Fortunately, Paul was mostly able to hear or see them coming in plenty of time to thwart them.

The sun was nearing the western horizon, and Jody estimated they'd covered about six of the seven or eight kilometers back to Stronghold, when one of the attacks finally got through.

* * *

With one final sizzle of charged vegetation, the last bit of poison shink blocking their path blackened and curled away. "Okay," Paul said, peering forward at the immediate terrain ahead, then lifting his head to survey the multiple arches of tree branches stretching out above them.

Jody looked up, too, eyeing the brilliant greenery distrustfully. Many of the trees they'd passed beneath during that long afternoon had featured lower branches that were dead and leafless and had thus provided little cover for anything larger than a nest of split-tails.

Not so this bunch. This bunch had apparently choked out all competing large vegetation, with the result that their branches had more or less free access to the region's daily quota of sunlight. That, along with the spiral arrangement of the branches, meant that it was worthwhile for nearly all of those branches to sprout leaves to catch that sunlight.

Which meant pretty much anything could be hiding up there.

Jody didn't like the look of the path. Not a bit. But they had little choice. A brief reconnoiter had showed a huge patch of green treacle to their left, and an equally large expanse of impassible marshland to their right. The only other option was to backtrack and find another route, and with the forest having grown steadily denser as they traveled there was a good chance they would find themselves in a similar situation somewhere else down the line anyway.

The others had clearly, and probably just as reluctantly, come to the same conclusion. "Are we going, or aren't we?" Geoff, at the cage's rear, growled as the seconds ticked past without anyone moving. "Come on, I don't want to be out in the open when the sun goes down and the predator night shift starts."

"Good point," Freylan agreed reluctantly. He took a deep breath. "Okay--"

"Hold it," Paul said suddenly. "Listen."

Jody frowned, straining her ears. What had he heard?

"Uh-oh," Freylan said quietly, twisting half around to look over his shoulder at the cage.

And Jody felt her breath catch in her throat as she suddenly got it.

For the first time in hours, Snouts had gone silent.

"You three wait here," Paul said, starting to ease forward past Freylan. "I'll check it out."

"Hold it," Geoff said. "All things being equal, if something decides to jump us I'd rather be up there with you than back here alone."

"I agree," Freylan seconded.

Paul's lip twitched, but he reluctantly nodded. "If it'll make you feel better," he said. "But stay a couple of paces back, and don't crowd me."

They set off, Paul in the lead, followed closely by Freylan, the swaying cage, and Geoff. Jody walked at Geoff's left, keeping her eyes moving and making especially sure to keep an eye behind them. During the past half hour an odd haze had begin to take over her mind, no doubt brought on by a day's worth of fear, fatigue, and adrenaline overload.

And they still had a good kilometer or two to go. At this point, she wasn't at all sure she was going to make it.

"Jody, you have those stun sticks handy?" Geoff murmured in her ear.

"Handy enough," Jody said, frowning at him. "Why?"

"Why do you think?" Geoff muttered. "Let me have one."

"Dad said you weren't supposed to," Jody reminded him.

"I don't care what he said," Geoff bit out. "Hand it over. Now."

Jody threw a quick glance forward. Her father, his attention on the area ahead and above them, didn't seem to have heard the exchange.

And suddenly she realized that she would rather like to have a weapon handy, too. Sliding open the fastener on one of the two packs hanging across her chest, she pulled out the two stun sticks and handed one to Geoff. "Be careful with it," she muttered.

"Don't worry," he said. Shifting it across to his right hand, he clicked off the safety catch and rested his thumb on the activation switch. Swallowing hard, wondering what her father would say if he caught them with the weapons, Jody did the same.

They'd gone ten more paces when the entire grove exploded in ululating howls and a dozen snarling, wolflike animals leaped from the branches above them.

Reflexively, Jody dropped into a crouch, turning half around as two of the animals hit the ground three meters away and charged toward her. Vaguely, she heard herself screaming at them in turn as she frantically tried to activate her stun stick.

But somehow, her madly searching thumb couldn't seem to find the switch. The nearest of the predators had opened its jaws wide, giving her a horrifying glimpse of sharp teeth and a bright red mouth.

Abruptly a brilliant flash of blue light slashed across the animal's flank. The creature twitched violently in midstride, then nose-dived onto the matted ribbon vines. Its partner dodged to the side, opened its own jaws, then also fell as a second antiarmor laser shot took it out.

And then, Jody's scrabbling thumb found the stun stick's activation button, and the sizzle of half a megavolt of electricity joined the cacophony of howling filling the grove. Something moved at the corner of her eye, and she swung around, trying to bring up the stun stick to intercept it.