Cobra Guardian: Cobra War: Book Two (40 page)

"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 the 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."

"Good call, Carsh Zoshak," Jin said approvingly. "So. Door to door?"

"Door to door," Kemp confirmed. "But let's see first if we can figure out which ones have actual Trofts cowering behind them. I'll take left; you take right."

Jin nodded and stepped to the nearest door on the right. Pressing her ear against it, she keyed in her audio enhancers.

The faint background noises of the ship leaped suddenly into sharp focus. Consciously, she pushed aside the various generator, pump, and relay noises and tried to sort out the sounds of breathing, conversation, or flapping radiator membranes.

Nothing. Keying down her audios, she headed down the corridor toward the next door in line.

She had made it halfway when a sudden new sound cut through the background noise: a sharp, multiple snapping noise, coming from at least two directions. "Kemp?" she whispered.

"I hear them," Kemp said grimly. "Damn."

"What is it?" Zoshak demanded.

"High-energy capacitors discharging," Kemp told him. "Sounds like they've got the big lasers going again. The fluffers must have finished off the roseberries and cleared out."

And with the big weapons' targeting systems clear, the Cobras in both the town and the forest were now in deadly danger. "We have to shut them down," she said.

"No argument." Kemp waved a hand down the corridor. "Any guesses as to where they're firing them from?"

"No, but you and Carsh Zoshak are going to find out," Jin said, peering down the corridor. Midway to the other end was another corridor that bisected theirs. At the aft end of that corridor, if she was visualizing things correctly, would be the ready room attached to the topside hatch. "I'll go on top and see what I can do about them from outside."

"What?" Kemp demanded. "Wait a minute--"

"If you get control of the weapons, fire a burst high over the forest or town," Jin called over her shoulder as she ran toward the corridor. "Good luck, and watch yourselves."

The cross-corridor, thankfully, was also deserted. Jin headed aft, keeping her audios high enough to hear incautious footsteps. The corridor ended in yet another unmarked door; bracing herself, Jin tried the handle.

It was unlocked. Readying her sonic, she pushed it open a crack and looked inside.

The room was small and as deserted as the corridors. On its walls were more of the weapons racks she'd seen in the guardroom downstairs, except that these racks were all empty. Along with removing the room ID plaques, the techs up here had also taken the time to raid the local armory before locking themselves in their rooms.

In the center of the ceiling, at the top of a narrow stairway, was the hatch.

Seconds later she was up on top of the hull crest, the wind whipping across her face and tugging at her green-flecked operation suit, her eyes and ears filling once again with the light and noise of the battle still raging on far below.

And as she stood there, getting her bearings, one of the wing lasers flared, flashing brilliance across the landscape as it blazed death and destruction somewhere inside the forest.

She took a deep breath. Kemp and Zoshak might find the weapons' control room in time. Having located it, they might figure out how to break in and fight their way through the Trofts inside without getting themselves killed.

But the odds were that they wouldn't. Not until a lot more Cobras out there had died.

Which meant it was up to her. Somehow, she had to come up with a way to disable the weapons from up here.

And she'd better come up with it fast.

* * *

Jody's experience with battles up to now had consisted of detailed descriptions in books, many of them accompanied by neat lines and arrows. Compared to that, the real-life battle raging across the town and clear zone around her was utter chaos.

Nevertheless, as near as she could tell, it had looked like the Cobras were going to pull it off. Certainly once her mother's group made it inside the warship, she had dared to hope that it was almost over.

But that was before the big wing-mounted lasers had unexpectedly sprung to life. Now, watching helplessly as the weapons blazed death and destruction across the human forces, slicing through trees and houses, her hopes were suddenly hanging by a thread.

"They'll make it," Freylan said, his hands gripping the binoculars tightly as he pressed them to his face. He'd taken over binocular duty a few minutes ago, when the violence and death had unexpectedly hit Jody's gag reflex and she couldn't bear to watch it close-up anymore. "They're probably just having to fight their way through a few leftover soldiers. They'll make it, and they'll get those lasers shut down."

"I know," Jody murmured. But she knew no such thing, and neither did he. The Trofts wouldn't have just a few leftover soldiers in there--the ones inside the ship would undoubtedly be their best. That was certainly how Jody would have arranged things, anyway. There was no guarantee that the Cobras would be able to fight through those soldiers and find their way to the weapons control room. Certainly not without taking serious casualties.

And Jody's mother was a fifty-two-year-old Cobra with arthritis and a bad knee. If any of the attack team was going to die, it would probably be her.

"Whoa!" Freylan said suddenly, leaning toward the window. "What the . . . ? Jody, your mother's up on top of the ship!"

"
What
?" Jody snatched the binoculars from him and pressed them to her eyes. To her utter amazement, she found that he was right.

Her first reaction was a sigh of relief that Jin hadn't been killed fighting her way inside. But midway through the sigh, the realization of what her mother was doing up there suddenly flooded in on her. "Oh, no," she breathed. Shoving the binoculars back into Freylan's hands, she dashed toward the living room doorway, banging her knee against the couch in her haste. "Get away from the window," she snapped.

"What are you doing?" Freylan asked as he hastily climbed out of his chair and pressed himself against the wall.

"I have to let Dad know," she said, finding the light switch. "She's going to try to knock out the lasers from up there."

"By
herself
?"

"You see anyone else up there?" Jody shot back, her brain working furiously to compose a message she could send quickly. "Close your eyes or lose your night vision."

Squeezing her own eyes tightly shut, she began flipping the switch, on-off, on-off in Dida code.
Mom on top of ship--trying for lasers. Assist
?

"Tell him to contact Lorne," Freylan said suddenly. "If he hasn't used up all those drones yet, maybe he can throw some of them into the weapons clusters."

Jody nodded. "Right."

It was only as she was starting her third repeat of the message that it occurred to her that there might no longer be anyone out there capable of reading it.

* * *

"Broom?
Broom
!"

With a start, Paul snapped back to consciousness. A foggy, dreamy sort of consciousness, but consciousness just the same. "What is it?" he asked, his voice sounding oddly slurred.

"We got a message," the Cobra said as he grabbed Paul's chest under his arms and pulled him up into a sitting position. "There--the governor's residence."

"I see it," Paul said, blinking a couple of times to clear his vision and his brain.
Dit dah dah dah dit dah dit dit
. . .

"Well?"

"She says Jin's on top of the warship," Paul said, struggling to push himself higher. "I need to tell Lorne to fly his drones into the clusters." He took a deep breath.

And broke into a sudden fit of coughing.

"S'okay," the other Cobra said, lowering him to the ground again. "I got it."

He got Paul settled, then stood upright behind one of the trees and filled his lungs. "Lorne Broom," he bellowed. "Cobra skipper nest! Drones hoverbird feeding! Move it!"

* * *

"What was that?" one of the Cobras, a rough-looking man named Olwen, said suddenly.

"What was what?" Lorne asked, staring at his displays with a sinking heart as he waited for the ready light to come on. There were still two of those armored trucks out there, not counting whatever was still operational inside Stronghold, and he'd figured on taking them out with his last two drones.

Only now the game had suddenly changed. From the intensity of the laser fire outside, it was clear that the Trofts had the ship's main weapons clusters operational again.

"I heard someone call your name," Olwen said, ducking though the hole in the barrier and hurrying toward the open drone hatch. "Yes," he added, raising his voice as he crooked his ear toward the open drone hatch. "He's saying ‘Lorne Broom . . . Cobra skipper nest . . . drones hoverbird feeding . . . move it.' "

Lorne stared at him. "
What
?"

"Skipper nests are at the very tops of trees," one of the other Cobras said. "Sounds like Kemp or one of the others made it up on top of the ship."

"And hoverbirds come up underneath hanging flowers to feed," the other Cobra added.

"I'm guessing that means they want you to ram the drones into the weapons clusters," Olwen concluded.

"Right," Lorne said, grimacing. Great plan.

Only there were four weapons clusters, and he only had two drones.

But he could at least take down two of them. "Let's give it a try," he said. "Olwen, stand clear."

Olwen nodded and took a couple of steps to the side. The forward starboard cluster first, Lorne decided as he popped the second-to-last drone from its rack and sent it drifting toward the hatchway. Not only was that the closest group, it was also the one with the widest field of fire into the area where most of Harli's Cobras were positioned. Resettling his grip on the control stick, he flew the drone past Olwen and out through the opening.

He'd gotten it maybe four meters outside the ship when the starboard lasers flared, and the indicators went crazy as the drone was shattered to scrap. The monitor blanked, the indicators went solid red, and even from the far side of the barrier Lorne had no difficulty hearing its remains crash to the ground.

"Well,
damn
it," one of the other Cobras muttered.

"Yeah," Lorne said. There were still four weapons clusters, and he only had one drone left. "Any ideas?"

There was a moment of silence. Then, through the barrier he heard Olwen snort. "Matter of fact, yeah, maybe I do," the Cobra said. "How good are you with that control stick?"

Lorne shrugged. "I nailed six out of six trucks, and three of them were trying to run. That good enough?"

"Should be, yeah," Olwen said. "Hang on."

He turned to the opening, and Lorne saw him fill his lungs. "Twist and whist!" he shouted. "Twist and whist, on the half-gigger!"

Frowning, Lorne looked at the other Cobras. They looked every bit as puzzled as he felt.

And then, their expressions cleared and understanding appeared. Still frowning, Lorne notched up his hearing a little, wondering what kind of response Olwen would get from below.

Apparently, they had understood the reference down there, too. "Twist and whist on the half-gigger," Harli's voice came drifting up to them. "Twist and whist on mark."

"We're on," Olwen announced, hurrying back through the barrier. "How fast can you get that last drone in the air?"