Cobra Guardian: Cobra War: Book Two (41 page)

"It's running startup now," Lorne said. "Another ninety seconds."

"Good," Olwen said. "Here's what you're going to do . . ."

* * *

For a minute Jin crouched on the warship's crest, listening to the battle below as she tried to come up with a plan.

The list of options wasn't very long. Her fingertip lasers would be useless against the weapons clusters--they were far too heavily armored. Her antiarmor laser might make some headway at close range, but only if she could sit there and continue to pour fire into the things.

Only she couldn't do that. Back on Qasama, the Trofts had shown they could adjust the aiming of each cluster to fire above the other wing on its side. Once she climbed out onto any one of the wings, she would have minutes at the most before the Trofts at the controls were able to remove the safeties that prevented accidental misfires of that sort, target her, and fry her right where she sat.

She frowned suddenly, her ears pricking up. Had someone down there just called Lorne's name? She notched up her audios, her heart pounding suddenly in her throat, wondering if they were calling for a medic for him.

But it was just a group of strange words, probably some kind of code message being sent to him inside the drone control room. Keying her audios back down, she turned back to the immediate problem at hand.

Or tried to turn back to it. Her brain felt sluggish, the way it had at critical times back on Qasama. More evidence, if she'd needed it, that her brain tumor was starting to reassert itself.

But the tumor would kill her in weeks or months. The Trofts would kill her tonight, and everyone else with her, if she didn't get back on top of this. Shaking her head to try to clear it, she focused again on the options.

Her lasers were out. Her sonics were obviously out. Using her servos to physically rip the weapons out of the cluster was even more obviously out.

Which left her arcthrower.

Grimacing, she squatted down on the crest beside the aft-portside wing, keying her telescopics and peering forward at the bow-portside wing. There was at least one missile tube in there among the lasers, she knew, and while the missiles waiting inside were well protected from laser fire from below, she doubted its designers had anticipated that it would have to withstand a high-voltage current hitting it at this range.

The problem was that in order to do that she would have to climb out onto the wing, lean over the edge, and fire her arcthrower straight down the missile tube at point-blank range.

She swallowed hard. There was no way it could work, she knew in the cold depths of her mind. The Trofts monitoring the weapons would spot her as she moved onto the wing, and either her target cluster's own lasers would get her while she was leaning over, or else the forward ones would shoot back and nail her before she got even that far.

But she had to try. Even if all she accomplished was to demonstrate the technique to the Cobras who would come after her, and to warn them of the risks, she still had to try. Taking a deep breath, still maintaining a low stance, she eased toward the aft wing.

And then, over the crest of the hull, she saw the diffuse reflected light of a sudden barrage of laser fire. She had just enough time to wonder what they were shooting at when the ones on her side of the ship also erupted in a massive firestorm. Not into the forest or town, but straight across the landscape.

She was staring at the blazing fury of the attack, wondering what in the Worlds was going on, when an object shot into view across the warship's bow, twisting and turning and jinking across her line of sight, staying about a quarter second ahead of the laser fire.

It was one of the drones, the kind that Lorne had dropped on several of the trucks earlier to clear the path for her team. Jin watched, waiting for it to do the same sort of nosedive, wondering which truck was in for it this time.

Or maybe he had something else in mind, she thought with a surge of hope. Maybe he was trying to get the drone clear so that he could drive it into one of the weapons clusters. If he could do that, maybe she wouldn't have to give up her life after all.

But the drone seemed to be making no attempt to attack the clusters. For that matter, it didn't seem to be doing anything at all. It just flew back and forth, staying ahead of the lasers, as if Lorne was daring the Troft gunners to take it down.

And then, through her foggy mind, Jin suddenly got it. This particular drone wasn't an attack, the way the Troft gunners obviously assumed.

This one was a diversion.

And even as Jin belatedly came to that realization, another group of laser bolts abruptly lit up the night sky.

But this fire wasn't coming from any of the ship's weapons. It was coming from the swivel guns of four of the trucks Lorne had earlier disabled and the Trofts had subsequently abandoned.

And all four of the lasers were firing at the forward weapons cluster on Jin's side.

The drone was instantly forgotten as the Troft gunners shifted their aim to the unexpected attack from below. But the trucks had been built to withstand such intense attacks, and even as all four trucks became enveloped by clouds of vaporized armor plating, their guns continued to fire. Jin held her breath . . .

And with a thunderous explosion, the weapons cluster erupted in a blaze of fire as its missile pack ignited. The blast sent debris shooting past Jin as the shock wave slammed into her, threatening to throw her off of her perch. She ducked lower, steadying herself, as the fireball faded away. Daring to hope, she peered through the spreading cloud of smoke.

To find that the attack had succeeded. The cluster was completely gone.

So was the wing the cluster had been attached to.

The mate to the wing that Jin was about to climb out onto.

There was nothing to be gained by thinking about it. Turning her eyes away from the jagged stump where the forward wing had once been, Jin jumped onto the aft wing beside her and dropped flat onto her belly. The warship's assault on the trucks had faltered, she noticed, the Trofts in fire control no doubt reeling from the unexpected loss of a full quarter of their weaponry. Jin had to do this now, before they got their mental balance back and spotted her up here.

If she died, she died. At least it would be quick.

Pulling herself forward, she leaned over the leading edge of the wing and aimed her little finger straight into one of the missile tubes. Taking a deep breath, she fired her arcthrower.

She never even heard the explosion that shattered the cluster and hurled her upward across the sky.

* * *

The four lasers lanced up from the ground beyond the wall, converging on the weapons beneath the warship's forward wing. The ship responded with an intense barrage of its own, and for a half-dozen agonizing seconds the duel raged on. Jody watched, holding her breath.

And then, with a brilliant flash, the forward cluster exploded, sending flaming debris flying in all directions and hurling the crumpled wing itself high into the air. It arced up and back down, and as the echoes of the explosion faded she distinctly heard the muffled thud as it landed somewhere inside Stronghold. "One down," she said with grim satisfaction. "Three more to go."

"Maybe just two," Freylan said. "If your mother can--oh, God."

"What is it?" Jody asked tensely.

"It's your mom," Freylan said, his voice rigid with horror. "She's on the aft wing. She's
on
the wing."

"
What
?" Jody gasped, her breath catching in her throat. "But didn't she see that--?"

"Of course she saw," Freylan said. "She's going to do it anyway."

"No," Jody breathed, her stomach churning as she watched the distant figure hunch forward on the small wing. "She can't."

But of course she could. And she would. Because there was danger, and war. And because Jin Moreau Broom was first and foremost a Cobra.

A Cobra.

It was a small chance. But it was the only one Jody had. Leaping to the window, she flung it all the way open. "Cobras!" she shouted as loudly as she could, knowing that there were still Trofts inside Stronghold's wall who might shoot at her and not giving a damn. "Cobra on the ship wing--needs assist and rescue!"

She was filling her lungs to repeat the message when the wing exploded.

"
No
!" she screamed, all of her pain and fear and rage compressed into that single word. The fireball was dissipating--

"There!" Freylan snapped. "There--way up there!"

Jody's eyes darted back and forth across the starry sky, her heart thudding in her throat.

And then, suddenly, she saw her mother, arcing high overhead, a piece of the wing soaring along beneath her as if flying in formation. She was tumbling slowly head over heels, her arms and legs splayed out limply, unconscious or injured.

Or dead.

Time seemed to stretch out. Helplessly, hopelessly, Jody watched as her mother reached the top of her arc and almost lazily curved over and started down again. She was still tumbling slowly, and a small, detached part of Jody's mind wondered how she would be turned when she hit the ground. Not that it probably even mattered. An impact from that height would probably kill her no matter how she landed. If she wasn't dead already.

She was picking up speed now, and Jody saw that she would land just inside the wall a little ways to the west, in an open area where Jody would be able to see her all the way to the end. If, that is, Jody had the courage to stay with her mother the whole way. Would she have that courage, or would she turn away, abandoning her mother to die alone, with no one even watching? A movement to her left caught her eye, and she shifted her eyes that direction--

To see a figure jump up onto the wall from somewhere outside and launch himself upward in a powerful Cobra leap aiming straight for Jody's mother.

Jody had barely enough time to tense up as the two arcing paths approached each other. The two figures intersected--

"He's got her," Freylan crowed. "He's got her!"

Jody nodded, not daring to speak, not daring to breathe. The Cobra's own upward arc had been flattened as he caught the falling body, and now both of them were falling back to earth. Jody watched, her hands tightened into fists, knowing that Cobra leg servos could absorb a lot of the force of the impending impact, but also knowing how easy it would be for her mother's rescuer to lose his balance and slam both of them facefirst onto the ground. Almost there . . .

And then they were down, the Cobra's knees bending hard with the impact, his legs simultaneously pumping as he tried to get his feet moving to catch up with his horizontal momentum.

But there was too much to be made up, and his legs were already busy trying to slow their descent, and as Jody watched she knew he wasn't going to make it. His body staggered off-balance and he started to pitch forward.

And then, suddenly, two more Cobras appeared out of nowhere, sprinting up behind the staggering figure and grabbing both him and Jin's limp body into their arms, locking the four of them together as they all ran, first stabilizing their group momentum, then braking to a fast but controlled halt.

"She's okay," Freylan said, his voice weak with relief as he handed Jody the binoculars. "I saw her blink, Jody. She's okay."

Jody pressed the binoculars to her eyes, almost afraid to hope. But he was right. Though her mother's face was flushed and burned, her eyelids were fluttering with slowly returning consciousness.

It was only then, as Jody let her eyes drift with relief and gratitude from her mother's face, that she saw that the arms still cradling Jin were clad in gloves and sleeves of scaled gray.

It wasn't one of the Cobras who had answered Jody's frantic call for help, who had raced across the battle zone, risking his own life, and leaped up from the wall to save the life of her mother.

It was one of the Qasamans.

Jody was still trying to wrap her mind around that when the forest once again lit up with laser fire.

She snapped her eyes back to the warship. The lasers from its remaining two weapons clusters were firing, all right.

But they were firing high above the forest, away from any of the Cobras.

[Soldiers of the Drim'hco'plai Demesne, I speak to them,] an amplified voice rolled across the suddenly quiet battlefield. [Our surrender, we have given it. Your surrender, you must also give it.]

"What's he saying?" Freylan asked.

Jody took a deep breath. "He's saying it's over," she said. "We've won."

For a moment Freylan seemed to ponder that. "No," he said quietly. "We may have won. But it's not over. Not by a long shot."

Chapter Twenty-One

It took the rest of the night to collect the wounded and get them under the care of Stronghold's medical personnel; to gather, disarm, and contain the Troft prisoners; and to gather and seal the dead for proper burial.

To Lorne's way of thinking, there were far too many in all three categories.

The sun was rising over the eastern forest when the word came that Harli Uy had summoned him to the Government Building for a final council of war.

The main conference room was already crowded when Lorne arrived. Harli was there, seated in the chair at the head where his father would normally be. Occupying the three chairs on either side of him were six other Caelian Cobras: Matigo, Olwen, Kemp, Tracker, and two more from the Stronghold contingent whom Lorne didn't know. Beside them to Harli's right were Lorne's parents and sister, with an empty chair between his mother and Jody that was obviously being saved for him. Facing them on the opposite side were the four Qasamans and Warrior, the Troft looking joltingly out of place among the humans. Lined up around the walls were more Cobras and a few of Stronghold's ordinary citizens, plus Croi and Nissa, who were hovering nervously behind Warrior. Behind Jody, Lorne noticed as he sat down, were Freylan and Geoff, both of them looking even more lost than Croi and Nissa did.

Lorne was apparently the last of the invited group to arrive. Even as he took his seat, Harli stirred and rose from his. "Thank you all for coming," he said, nodding first at those around the table and then acknowledging the people lining the walls. "I know you're all dead tired, and I also know there's still a lot of work to do, so I'll make this as brief as possible." He gestured to the four Qasamans. "Some of you know, others of you may not, that we have four representatives from the planet Qasama among us."