Cobra Guardian: Cobra War: Book Two (37 page)

"A tree is not necessary," Siraj said. "We--the Djinn--can throw him."

"You can
throw
him?" Harli echoed incredulously. "How strong are those suits of yours, anyway?"

"They're plenty strong," Jin said, frowning intently at Siraj. "But not
that
strong." She lifted a finger. "Unless their human payload does his full share of the work."

"Correct," Siraj said, nodding. "The two on the ground will throw the third upward. As he is being thrown, he will straighten his own leg servos to push off the others' hands."

"Adding in another pair of servos' worth of boost," Paul said, nodding slowly. "Tricky, but it might work."

"More than just tricky," Harli warned. "That sort of stunt takes serious timing to pull off, and as far as I know nothing like that is programmed into our nanocomputers."

"No, but we've got time to practice," Lorne said. "I assume we won't want to move until nightfall anyway."

"What, you saying
you're
going to go?" Harli shook his head. "Sorry. Matigo or Tracker can do it."

"Carsh Zoshak will do it," Siraj said firmly. "He has trained for such maneuvers."

"Good--I'll be happy to have the company," Lorne said. "But I'm the one who's actually been inside one of those things. Whoever else goes, I have to go, too."

Harli glared at him. Lorne returned his gaze calmly and evenly, waiting the other out, knowing he really didn't have any choice in the matter. "Speaking for ourselves," Siraj said into the taut silence, "we have fought alongside one son of Jasmine Moreau." He nodded gravely at Lorne. "We would welcome the chance to fight alongside another."

There was another brief silence. Then, Harli gave a noisy sigh. "Fine," he said. "Kemp, get some men together and take the Djinn and Broom somewhere where they can practice. Devole's Canyon, maybe. The rest of you, we've got a lot of work to do. And someone get Boulton back here--we'll want to pick his brain on all this."

"Right," Kemp said briskly, getting to his feet. "Broom? Djinn?"

The Qasamans stood up and followed Kemp as he headed back through the trees toward the spot where the Caelians had left their spookers. Bracing himself, Lorne stood up, too, and turned to his parents. "Gotta go," he said as casually as he could.

"We know," his mother said. Her face was pinched, and he could see a fresh layer of fear in her eyes. But she nevertheless forced a smile. "Be careful."

"I will." Lorne nodded at his father. "Keep an eye on her, okay? This place isn't exactly safe."

"I will," Paul promised, and Lorne could see him give Jin's hand an extra squeeze. "Have we mentioned lately how proud we are of you?"

"Thanks," Lorne said. "But it's not like I've got a choice. I'm a Moreau and a Broom. I've got a lot to live up to."

"You've already lived up to it," Paul assured him. "And you'll be adding even more to that legacy tonight." He gestured. "Now get going. You've got a busy day ahead of you."

* * *

Governor Uy shook his head. "They're insane," he murmured. "You realize that, don't you?"

"Probably," Jody agreed, keeping her voice down despite the fact that she'd long since destroyed all the Troft microphones in the governor's bedroom. "My family is, anyway. I can't speak for yours."

"Oh, no, Harli's as mad as they come," Uy assured her, a weak smile touching his lips. The smile disappeared into a fit of coughing, his face contorting in pain with each convulsion.

Jody winced, frustration simmering like bile in her stomach. The doctor had stabilized Uy as best she could. But it was going to require the equipment at the town's medical center to properly deal with his injury, and the center was within laser shot of the sentry ring the Trofts had thrown around their downed ship. Uy had flatly forbidden any of them to even approach the place, let alone try to get him there.

Jody didn't like it any better than any of the others did. But she could understand his reasoning. With the mood the Trofts were probably in right now, walking into their sights would not be a good idea.

But it meant that all she and Elssa could do was try to keep him comfortable, give him pain medication when he needed it, and watch him suffer.

And hope that Harli's plan actually worked.

The coughing ran its course, and for another minute Uy lay back against his pillows, refilling his lungs with short, panting breaths. "Well, mad or not, it sounds at least possible," he said when he had finally recovered enough to speak. "Did he say what he wanted me and the Stronghold Cobras to do?"

"I think his exact words were that you were to rest, recover, and stay out of the line of fire," Jody said. "He also sent his love."

"Yes," Uy murmured, and Jody again felt her stomach tightening as she saw in his face the recognition that this might be his son's last night alive.

Just as it might be the last night for Jody's own mother, father, and brother. Three of the four people she held most dear in all the universe could be taken from her before Caelian's next dawn.

At least they had preparations to help keep their minds off the danger ahead. Jody had nothing.

"Well, that's me," Uy said. "What about our Cobras? Does he want them to provide diversion or flanking or anything else?"

"I'm sure he'd love for them to do that," Jody said. "But since we're all stuck in our houses and can't properly communicate with them, he's decided he can't really give them any instructions."

"They won't need any," Uy said. "They'll know when to take action."

"Yes, he thought they might," Jody said. "I guess we'll just have to leave it to them to decide what to do."

"They'll do their job," Uy said. He paused, and Jody could see him making a conscious effort to push his fears away. "They'll be all right," he added quietly. "Your family will. They've survived Aventine's expansion regions, not to mention everything Caelian's been able to throw at them. They'll make it."

"I know," Jody said, forcing a smile she didn't feel. "So will Harli."

"I know," Uy said.

Jody took a deep breath. "Right," she said. "Meanwhile, it's time for your medicine."

She turned to the table beside the bed, blinking back tears. They were liars, of course. Both of them.

She just wasn't as good at it as he was.

Chapter Nineteen

Night had fallen on Stronghold, and two hours of darkness had crawled slowly past. The sky was cloudless above the trees, the stars of Caelian blazing down on the town and the forest arrayed against it.

And all was finally ready.

Jin stood with Kemp and Matigo and the rest of the Cobras that Harli had dubbed the spearhead team, gazing through the trees at the ring of outward-facing floodlights the Trofts had set in front of their sentry line. Whether the lights were supposed to blind potential attackers or merely keep them from sneaking up on the ships unnoticed, Jin didn't know. All she knew was that she and her family were about to go into deadly danger.

Would any of them survive this night? There was no way to know. Even Jody, in the relative safety of Stronghold, wasn't immune to the fire and hell about to burst on the region like a volcanic eruption. Governor Uy's wounding earlier that morning clearly showed that much. By the time the Caelian wilderness was again dark and silent, everyone she held dear might be dead.

And there was nothing she could do to prevent it, except do her best.

She felt her throat tighten. She'd done her best back on Qasama, too. But that hadn't been enough to keep her eldest son Merrick from being critically wounded.

For a moment her thoughts flicked to him across the light-years. Was he recovering now under the care of the Qasaman doctors and their vast pharmacopoeia of healing drugs? Had he suffered a relapse, and was even now barely clinging to life?

Or had he already lost that final battle?

There was no way to know. There was also nothing to be gained by thinking that way. Nothing she could do, not even doing her best in the impending battle, could help him now. All she could do was hope they could win this battle, and that they could persuade some of the Caelian Cobras to return to Qasama with them. Only then would she finally be able to see Merrick again, and to learn what his fate had been.

Something brushed her arm, and she looked down to see a delicate insect with a wingspan the size of her fist nibbling away at her sleeve. With a grimace, she shook it off, encouraging its departure with a flick of her fingers. For the battle Harli had sent someone back to Aerie to get the Cobras' official operation suits, ceremoniously presented to them on graduation from the academy and stored away ever since their arrival on Caelian. The outfits were more comfortable and far better suited for combat than anything else available, but the fact that they were partially made of organic fibers meant that the Cobras were going to have to put up with all the annoyances of Caelian ecology while they fought against the Trofts.

It was only minor comfort to know that the Trofts were also having to deal with the floating spores and organics and the wide range of fauna ready, eager, and willing to come in for dinner.

"Gunners, ready," Harli's distant voice came in Jin's enhanced hearing, just barely audible over Caelian's night noises. "Fire in three; audios down."

Taking a deep breath, Jin keyed off her audios . . . and two heartbeats later the forest exploded with a crashing volley of shotgun fire. A heartbeat later came a second volley, this one slightly more spread out than the first, and then a third, this one easily discernable as six separate shots.

And as the thunder faded away, the night returned to relative silence. "Broom?" Kemp murmured from behind her.

Jin leaned a little to the side, giving herself a view of the standing warship's forward starboard wing through the tree branches. The berries Tracker and his team had just fired up into the weapons cluster showed up clearly on her telescopics, the sticky husks dotting the lasers and missile tubes, the viscous juice slowly and reluctantly moving across the metal.

"Here they come," someone murmured. "I can hear them."

Jin notched up her audios . . . and even as she caught the feathery rush of batting wings a swarm of mothlike insects burst into view. They flew to the weapons cluster, jostling each other as they vied for the sweet roseberry juice, creating a wide, dense cloud of wings and bodies in front of the Trofts' cameras.

A laser flared through the swarm, the intensity of the light jolting through Jin's enhanced vision like a slap across the face. Another shot blazed out, vaporizing another handful of moths, and then two more shots snapped out in rapid succession. Peripherally, Jin could see that all the other weapons clusters on the two ships were also firing blindly now as they attempted to drive the insects away.

But the moths' brains were far too small to realize that their fellows were being slaughtered by the bucketful, and they wouldn't have cared even if they had realized it. As each shot opened a pathway through the cloud it was instantly filled as moths on the periphery crowded in toward the alluring smell of the berries.

With a few handfuls of berries, and help from the relentless Caelian ecology, the Trofts inside the ship were now blind.

Jin took a deep breath. "Get ready," she said. "It won't be long now."

* * *

"There!" Jody said, jabbing a finger at the warship wings as she handed Uy's night binoculars to Freylan. "You can see the fluffers clouding in."

"Yeah, I see them," Freylan confirmed, pressing the binoculars to his eyes. "They must have used roseberries--there's nothing else that drives those things that crazy."

"Way to go, Geoff," Jody murmured, wincing as the ships' lasers suddenly flashed to life, blazing through the swarming insects. If the Trofts were able to kill enough of the fluffers or just drive them away . . .

Freylan snorted. "Like
that's
going to do any good," he said contemptuously. He handed the binoculars back to Jody and reached to the table beside them for the flare pistol Uy had found in his emergency kit. "Let me know when."

Jody nodded, her throat tight as she watched the Troft lasers still trying to drive the fluffers away. Any minute now . . .

* * *

Twenty meters up his assigned tree, holding tightly to the branches, Paul watched the Trofts' useless light show as they tried to drive the moths away from their monitor cameras. Any minute now . . .

"Perimeter team: fire," Harli's voice drifted over the mad fluttering of insect wings.

And all around the area, the ground and trees came alive with Cobra antiarmor laser fire.

Paul was right in there with them, pressing his left leg close to the tree trunk as he targeted and blasted the four floodlights of the Troft perimeter nearest his position. He had finished knocking out the last of them when a flurry of return fire slammed into his tree, blowing splinters and chunks of charred wood across his sight.

Instantly, he swung his leg back behind the trunk and let go his grip, dropping below the hail of laser fire to the next set of handholds he'd prepared. Glancing around the trunk, he targeted three of the Troft soldiers who were firing at his tree and again swung his leg around into position. Three quick shots, and then he pulled the leg back and dropped again. This time he was in position and scouting his next target when the return fire began hammering at the spot he'd just vacated.

Again he peered around the tree, ignoring the splinters raining down as he took stock of the situation. The duck-shoot phase, as Harli had dubbed it, was unfortunately over. The remaining ground troops were abandoning their exposed positions behind the ring of shattered floodlights and were scurrying as fast as they could for the cover of the armored trucks. The trucks themselves were rolling forward, coming to their troops' support--

There was a brilliant triple flash, and one entire side of the tree just above Paul vaporized as one of the trucks fired a cluster shot into the wood. Grimacing, Paul dropped another three meters, then shoved himself sideways off his branches and leaped to the next tree over.